UC-NRLF 


B    M    1D5    M5E 


H.  -i^- 


OLD 
LOVE  STORIES 
RETOLD 


CHARD    LEGALLIEi^ixE 


'tr-^ -^H  b^^ 


OLD  LOVE  STORIES  RETOLD 


Tlie  iSccond  Mcetiuy  of  Dante  and  Beatrice 


Old 

Love  Stories 
Retold 


By 

Richard  Le  Gallienne 

Author  of 

''The  ^uest  of  the  Golden  Girl,"  ''How  to 

Get  the  Best  Out  of  Books,"'  "An 

Old   Country  House," 

etc.,  etc. 


Panel  Designs  by  George  W.  Hood 


New  To7^k 

The  Baker   &    Taylor   Co, 

33-37    East    17th    Street 
(Union  Sq.,  N .) 


Copyrijrht,  lOOl,  l)y  The  Baker  d-  Taylor  Co. 

Aucassin  and  Xicoletc,"  copyright,  1901,  by  Cosmopolitan  Magazine  Co. 

Dante  and  Beatrice,"  "Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Lady  Penelope  Devereux," 
"  Heine  and   Mathilde,"   "  La  Salle  and  Helen  von  Donniges," 
copyright,  1002,  by  Cosmopolitan  Magazine  Co. 

"  Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin,"  copyright,   1903,  by 
Cosmopoli'an  Magazine  Co. 


Published,  Ovfober,  1904 


The  Plimpton  Press,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


Dante  and  Beatrice 


■/Wc- 


a 


m^ 


CONTENTS 


II 


Aucassin  and  Nicolete 

III 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Lady  Penelope 
Devereux 

IV 

Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 


John  Keats  and  Fanny  Braivne 
VI 


Heine  and  Mathilde 

VII 

Ferdinand  Lassalle  and  Helen  von 
Donniges 

VIII 
Ahelard  and  Heloise 

[5] 


29 

44 
66 

85 

101 

122 
161 


The  ivritcr  desires  to  iJutnk  ^Ir.  John  Brisben 
Walker  /or  Jiis  kindness  in  allowing  him  to  re- 
frint  seven  of  the  following  stories,  together  with 
certain  of  the  illustrations,  whicJi  originally  ap- 
peared in  The  Cosmopolitan.  The  paper  on 
'' Abe  lard  and  Ileloise''  Jias  not  been  printed 
before. 


The  Second  Meeting  of  Dante  and  Bea 

trice  Frontispiece 

Facing  Page 
Sahitation  of  Beatrice 

Dante's  Dream 

Dante  on  the  Anniversary  of  Beatrice' 
Death 


Nicolete  Weighs  How  She  Mag  Escape 
from  the  Tower 

Aucassin   Finds  Nicolete    in  a  Bower 


24 


36 


in  the  Wood 

40 

Portrait  of  Sidney  in  Armor 

52 

Sidney's  Birthplace 

60 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley 

68 

Field  Place,  Sussex.     The  Poet's  Birth- 

place 

76 

John  Keats 

92 

Heinrich  Heine 

112 

Ferdinand  Lassalle 

148 

[^] 

To  my  friend 
Charles  Hanson  Towne 


OLD  LOVE  STORIES  RETOLD 


Dante  and  Beatrice 

THE  great  historic  love  stories  of  the  workl 
are  hke  the  great  classics  of  art  and  litera- 
ture. They  have  become  universal  symbols  of 
human  experience.  There  are  many  ways  of 
loving,  many  shapes  of  story  taken  by  the  fate- 
ful passion  of  love  in  a  difficult  world,  which, 
though  it  may  love  a  lover,  seldom  shows  its  love 
in  the  form  of  active  sympathy  while  the  story 
is  in  the  making.  The  great  love  stories  fix 
either  the  type  of  loving  after  the  manner  of  one 
or  another  temperament,  or  the  type  of  dramatic 
expression  imposed  upon  love  by  circumstance. 
Thus  the  story  of  Tristram  and  Iseult  stands  for 
a  love  irresistibly  passionate,  stormily  sensual, 
a  very  madness  of  loving.  It  represents  a  quality 
of,   a  way  of,   loving.     The   significance   of  the 

[S>] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
story  of  Paolo  and  Francesca,  on  the 
otlier  liand,  is  less  in  the  love  of  the  lovers 
themselves  than  in  the  shape  of  destiny 
which  it  took  under  the  pressure  of  cir- 
cumstance. Lanciotto  is  no  less  impor- 
tant, is  even  more  important,  to  the  story 
than  the  lovers  themselves,  whereas  in 
the  case  of  Tristram  and  Iseult  we  never 
give  a  second  thought  to  King  Mark. 
Our  eyes  are  held  by  the  spectacle  of  the 
superb  passion  of  the  lovers,  as  by  some 
awe-inspiring  display  of  the  elements. 
The  love  of  Paolo  and  Francesca,  how- 
ever, strikes  no  individual  characteristic 
note  —  the  lovers  themselves  have  no 
personality  —  and  it  is  merely  one  of 
the  elements  in  the  making  of  a  pic- 
turesque shape  of  tragedy,  a  shape  which, 
before  and  since,  love-history  has  been 
constantly  taking,  and  to  which  in  the 
case  of  Paolo  and  Francesca  the  genius 
of  a  great  poet  has  given  an  accidental 
immortality. 

Dante's  own  love-story  belongs  t^LJhe 


Dante  and  Beatrice 
first,  more  significant,  class.  His  love 
for  Beatrice  is  important  because  it  stands 
for  a  way  of  loving.  As  many  have  loved 
and  still  go  on  loving  the  way  of  Tristram 
and  Iseult,  so  many  have  loved  and  still 
go  on  loving  Dante's  way,  though  such  a 
fashion  of  loving  is  perhaps  less  common. 
Yet,  is  it  so  rare,  after  all,  for  a  man  to 
carry  enshrined  in  his  heart  from  boyhood 
to  manhood,  and  on  to  old  age,  the  holy 
face  of  some  little  girl  seen  for  a  brief 
while  in  the  magic  dawn  of  life,  lost  al- 
most as  soon  as  seen,  yet  seen  in  that 
short  moment  with  such  an  ecstasy  of 
sight  as  to  become  for  him  a  deathless 
angel  of  the  imagination,  a  lifelong  dream 
to  keep  pure  the  heart  .^ 

A  poet's  love  is  apt  to  be  a  lonely,  sub- 
jective passion,  even  when  it  is  returned; 
for  the  woman  whom  the  poet  loves  is 
often  as  much  his  own  creation  as  one  of 
his  own  poems.  Like  Pygmalion  he 
loves  the  work  of  his  own  dreams.  But 
never  was  any  poet's  love  —  not  even  that 


-.^.m 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
of  John  Keats  for  Fanny  Brawne  —  so  entirely 
one-sided  as  that  of  Dante  for  Beatrice.  Save 
as  the  object  of  Dante's  worship,  Beatrice  has 
no  share  in  the  story  at  all.  She  seems  to  have 
had  no  more  care  for  Dante's  love,  and  indeed  to 
have  been  hardly  more  aware  of  its  existence, 
than  a  new  star  has  care  for,  or  is  aware  of,  its 
discoverer.  *'The  beloved,"  says  Hafiz,  "is  in 
no  need  of  our  imperfect  love."  Dante  was  free 
to  worship  her  afar  off  if  he  pleased.  It  was 
not  her  fault  if  she  preferred  the  less  portentous 
attentions  of  the  society  young  fellows  of  her  set. 
A  lover  like  Dante  might  well  bewilder,  and  even 
alarm,  a  young  miss,  whose  thoughts,  for  all  her 
mystical  beauty,  ran  —  innocently  and  properly 
enouffh  —  on  her  sweetmeats  and  her  next  dance. 
But,  if  that  saying  of  Hafiz  be  true,  it  is  open  to 
the  retort  that  a  lover  like  Dante  can  dispense 
with  a  return  of  his  affection.  All  he  asks  is  to 
dream  his  dream.  To  have  his  love  returned 
might  be  disastrous  to  his  dream.  It  is  no  mere 
flippancy  to  suppose  that  had  Dante  had  fuller 
opportunities  of  knowing  the  real  earth-born 
Beatrice,  the  divine  Beatrice  would  have  been 
[12] 


»-  WM 


Salutation  of  Beatrice 


Da?itc  and  Beatrice 
lost  to  him  and  to  us.  Fortunately,  their  inter- 
course seems  to  have  been  of  the  slightest.  For 
Beatrice  Dante  was  hardly  more  than  an  ac- 
quaintance, who,  after  the  fashion  of  his  day, 
paid  court  to  her  in  sonnet  and  ballata  —  forms 
of  devotion  at  that  time  hardly  so  serious  as  a 
serenade.  For  it  was  the  period  of  the  courts 
and  colleges  of  love,  when  a  poet  might  write  in 
the  name  of  a  strictly  poetical  "  mistress,"  with 
hardly  more  thought  of  scandalous  realities  be- 
hind his  song  than  if  to-day  a  poet  should  dedi- 
cate his  new  volume,  by  permission,  to  some 
noble  lady.  Dante's  uniquely  beautiful  record 
of  his  love-story,  the  "  Vita  Nuova,"  is  cast  in 
just  that  formal  fanciful  mould  of  literary  and 
mystical  love-making  which  was  then  fashionable, 
and  were  it  not  that  the  form  of  it  is  quite  power- 
less to  suppress  the  intense  sincerity  and  youth- 
ful freshness  of  an  evidently  real  feeling,  it  might 
have  passed  for  a  brilliant  piece  of  troubadour 
make-believe.  As  it  is,  however,  the  very  arti- 
ficiality of  the  form  is  turned  to  account,  and 
seems  rather  to  accentuate  than  detract  from  the 
impression  of  youthful  ecstasy.  Young  love  is 
[13] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
ever  curious  to  invent  some  form  of  ex- 
quisite ritual  for  the  expression  of  its  wor- 
ship. Common  words  are  not  rare 
enough  for  the  fastidious  young  priest 
who  thus  bows  his  head  in  the  awful 
sanctuary  of  his  first  love.  So  the  very 
artifice  with  which  in  the  "Vita  Nuova" 
we  see  Dante  delighting  to  fret  little 
golden  "chambers  of  imagery"  for  the 
honey,  and  delicate  lachrimatories  for 
the  sorrow,  of  his  love,  is  in  itself  an 
added  touch  of  reality. 

Very  youthful  and  lover-like  is  the 
vein  of  mystical  superstition  which  runs 
through  the  confession,  as,  for  example, 
the  insistence  on  the  number  nine  in  the 
opening  sentences  and  throughout.  Not 
without  hidden  significance,  it  seemed 
to  the  young  poet,  was  it  that  he  should 
have  met  Beatrice  when  she  was  almost 
beginning  her  ninth  year  and  he  almost 
ending  his.  Here  alone  was  an  evidence 
that  they  were  born  for  each  other.  Who 
can    forget    his    hushed    account    of   his 

14. J 


Dante  and  Beatrice 
first  meeting  with  that  "youngest  of  the 
angels  "  ? 

*'  Nine  times  ah'eady  since  my  birth  had 
the  heaven  of  hght  returned  to  the  self- 
same point  almost,  as  concerns  its  own 
revolution,  when  first  the  glorious  Lady 
of  my  mind  was  made  manifest  to  my  eyes, 
even  she  who  was  called  Beatrice  by 
many  who  knew  not  wherefore.  She  had 
already  been  in  this  life  for  so  long  as 
that,  within  her  time,  the  starry  heaven 
had  moved  towards  the  eastern  quarter 
one  of  the  twelve  parts  of  a  degree;  so 
that  she  appeared  to  me  at  the  beginning 
of  her  ninth  year  almost,  and  I  saw  her 
almost  at  the  end  of  my  ninth  year.  Her 
dress,  on  that  day,  was  of  a  most  noble 
colour,  a  subdued  and  goodly  crimson, 
girdled  and  adorned  in  such  sort  as  best 
suited  with  her  very  tender  age.  At  that 
moment,  I  say  most  truly  that  the  spirit 
of  life,  which  hath  its  dwelling  in  the 
secretest  chamber  of  the  heart,  began  to 
tremble  so  violently  that  the  least  pulses 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

of  my  })()(ly  shook  tliorewitli;  and  in  treml)ling 
it  said  these  words:  Ecce  deus  fortior  me,  cjui 
veniens  dominabitur  mihi  [Here  is  a  deity  stronger 
than  I;  who,  coming,  shall  rule  over  me]." 

It  is  probable  that  this  historic  meeting  thus 
mystically  described  had  come  of  Dante's  father 
one  day  taking  the  boy  with  him  to  a  festa  —  or, 
as  we  should  say,  a  party  —  given  by  his  neigh- 
bour Folco  de  Portinari.  Dante's  father  was,  it 
would  appear,  a  well-to-do  lawyer,  with  old 
blood  in  his  veins,  but  still  of  the  burgher  class; 
whereas  Portinari  was  probably  richer  and  in  a 
higher  social  position. 

Another  nine  years  was  to  pass  before  Dante 
and  Beatrice  were  even  to  speak  to  each  other 
—  for  it  does  not  appear  that  they  had  spoken 
on  that  first  meeting  —  and  by  that  time  she  had 
been  given  in  marriage  to  a  banker  of  Florence, 
one  Simon  de  Bardi.  Meanwhile,  Dante  may 
have  caught  glimpses  of  her  in  church  or  on  the 
street,  but  beyond  such  slight  sustenance  his 
love  had  had  nothing  to  feed  on  all  those  years. 
Once  again  Dante  dwells  on  the  recurrence  of 
the  significant  number  nine  in  his  history.  "  After 
[Hi] 


Dante  and  Beatrice 
the  lapse,"  says  he,  "of  so  many  days  tlial  nine 
years  exactly  were  completed  since  the  above- 
written  appearance  of  this  most  gracious  being, 
on  the  last  of  those  days  it  happened  that  the 
same  wonderful  lady  appeared  to  me  dressed  all 
in  pure  white,  between  two  gentle  ladies  elder 
than  she.  And  passing  through  a  street,  she 
turned  her  eyes  thither  where  I  stood  sorely 
abashed;  and  by  her  unspeakable  courtesy,  which 
is  now  guerdoned  in  the  Great  Cycle,  she  saluted 
me  with  so  virtuous  a  bearing  that  I  seemed  then 
and  there  to  behold  the  very  limits  of  blessedness. 
The  hour  of  her  most  sweet  salutation  was 
exactly  the  ninth  of  that  day;  and  because  it  was 
the  first  time  that  any  w^ords  from  her  reached 
mine  ears,  I  came  into  such  sweetness  that  I 
parted  thence  as  one  intoxicated." 

What  were  the  words,  one  wonders,  that  sent 
the  poet  walking  on  air  through  the  streets  of 
Florence,  and  shut  him  up  in  the  loneliness  of 
his  own  room  to  dream  of  her,  and  to  write  mysti- 
cal sonnets  for  the  interpretation  of  his  fellow 
poets,  as  was  the  manner  of  that  day  .^  They 
can  hardly  have  been  more  than  a  "  Good-morn- 
[17] 


Old  hove  Stot'ies  Retold 
ino^,  Messer  Alighieri.  We  have  missed 
your  face  in  Florence  for  ever  so  long." 
But  then  the  voice  and  the  smile  that 
went  with  the  ordinary  words!  It  al- 
most seems  as  though  they  must  have 
conveyed  a  rarer  message  to  the  poet's 
heart.  -Or  did  the  poet  merely  misin- 
terpret according  to  his  hopes  an  act  of 
conventional  graciousness "? 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  he  did.  But, 
be  that  as  it  may,  that  "  most  sweet  saluta- 
tion" sufficed  so  to  fan  the  flame  of  love 
in  the  poet's  heart  that  he  grew  thin  and 
pale  from  very  lovesickness,  so  that  his 
friends  began  to  wonder  at  him  and  make 
guesses  at  the  lady.  Dante,  perceivmg 
this,  and  seeing  that  he  must  protect 
Beatrice  from  any  breath  of  gossip,  con- 
ceived the  plan  of  making  another  lady 
the  screen  for  his  love.  It  chanced  that, 
one  day  Dante  being  in  the  same  church 
with  Beatrice,  a  lady  sat  in  a  direct  line 
between  Beatrice  and  himself,  and,  as 
she  looked  round  at  him  several  times, 


Dante  and  Beatrice 
and  his  eyes,  in  reality  l)iirniii<;'  upon 
Beatrice,  niinlit  well  seem  to  be  answering 
hers,  the  gossips  concluded  that  she  it  was 
who  had  brought  him  to  such  a  pass  of 
love.  Becoming  aware  of  the  mistake, 
Dante  saw  in  it  the  needed  means  of 
shielding  Beatrice,  and  he  diligently  set 
about  confirming  the  gossips  in  their  error 
by  writing  poems  which  seemed  to  point 
to  the  other  lady,  but  were  in  reality  in- 
spired by  Beatrice.  At  this  time,  he  tells 
us,  he  made  a  list  in  the  form  of  a  "  sir- 
vente"  of  the  names  of  the  sixty  most 
beautiful  women  in  Florence,  and  he  bids 
us  take  note  of  a  strange  thing :  "  that  hav- 
ing written  the  list,  I  found  my  lady's 
name  would  not  stand  otherwise  than 
ninth  in  order  among  the  names  of  these 
ladies!" 

In  course  of  time,  travel  took  his  beau- 
tiful "screen"  from  Florence,  and  it  be- 
came necessary  for  him  to  find  a  substi- 
tute. This  he  was  presently  enabled  to 
do,  and  soon  he  became  so  identified  with 


mrn^ 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
his  fictitious  lady,  and  rumour  began  to  speak  such 
evil  of  them  both,  that  his  own  true  huly,  "the 
destroyer  of  all  evil  and  the  queen  of  all  good," 
meeting  him  one  day,  denied  him  her  salutation. 
Thereon,  in  bitter  grief,  Dante  took  counsel  of 
Love,  and  composed  a  veiled  song  which  should 
reveal  the  truth  to  Beatrice  and  yet  hide  it.  But 
how  she  received  it,  or  whether  or  not  she  took 
him  l)ack  into  her  favour,  is  not  made  clear.  It 
hardly  seems  as  though  she  had  done  so  from 
the  next  occasion  on  which  we  see  them  in  each 
other's  company.  This  was  one  of  great  sorrow 
and  bitterness,  and  is  described  so  vividly  by 
Dante  himself  that  I  will  transcri}>e  his  own 
words : 

"After  this  battling  with  many  thoughts,  it 
chanced  on  a  day  that  my  most  gracious  lady 
was  with  a  gathering  of  ladies  in  a  certain  place; 
to  the  which  I  was  conducted  by  a  friend  of 
mine.  .  .  .  And  they  were  assembled  around  a 
gentlewoman  who  was  given  in  marriage  that 
day;  the  custom  of  the  city  being  that  these 
should  bear  her  company  when  she  sat  down 
for  the  first  time  at  table  in  the  house  of  her  hus- 
[20] 


Dante  and  Beatrice 
band.     Therefore  I,  as  was  my  friend's  pleasure, 
resolved  to  stay  with  him  and  do  honour  to  those 
ladies. 

"  But  as  soon  as  I  had  thus  resolved,  I  began 
to  feel  a  faintness  and  a  throbbing  at  my  left  side, 
which  soon  took  possession  of  my  whole  body. 
Whereupon  I  remember  that  I  covertly  leaned 
my  l)ack  unto  a  painting  that  ran  round  the  walls 
of  that  house ;  and  being  fearful  lest  my  trembling 
should  be  discerned  of  them,  I  lifted  mine  eyes 
to  look  upon  those  ladies,  and  then  first  perceived 
among  them  the  excellent  Beatrice.  And  when 
I  perceived  her,  all  my  senses  were  overpowered 
by  the  great  lordship  that  Love  obtained,  finding 
himself  so  near  unto  that  most  gracious  being, 
until  nothing  but  the  spirits  of  sight  remained  to 
me.  .  .  .  By  this,  many  of  her  friends,  having 
discerned  my  confusion,  began  to  w^onder;  and, 
together  with  herself,  kept  whispering  of  me  and 
mocking  me.  Whereupon  my  friend,  who  knew 
not  what  to  conceive,  took  me  by  the  hands,  and 
drawing  me  forth  from  among  them,  required  to 
know  what  ailed  me.  Then,  having  first  held 
me  at  quiet  for  a  space  until  my  perceptions  were 
[21] 


L 


Old  hove  Stories 
come  hack  to  nie,  I  made  answer  to  my 
friend:  'Of  a  surety  I  have  now  set  my 
feet  on  tliat  point  of  Hfe  heyond  the 
which  he  must  not  pass  who  would  re- 
turn.'" 

From  that  moment  Dante's  passion 
was  an  open  secret  among  his  acquaint- 
ance, and  his  lovelorn  looks  were  matter 
of  jest  among  them.  We  read  of  no 
more  meetings  with  Beatrice,  except  a 
chance  encounter  in  the  street  as  she 
walked  with  a  beautiful  friend  named  Joan. 
Whether  she  gave  or  withheld  her  saluta- 
tion on  this  occasion,  Dante  does  not 
tell  us.  Meanwhile,  her  father  had  died, 
and  Dante  had  written  her  a  poem  of 
sympathy;  also  he  himself  had  been  so 
sick  that  thoughts  of  death  had  come 
close  to  him,  and  with  them  a  prophetic 
vision  of  the  death  of  Beatrice,  all  too 
soon  to  be  fulfilled.  Dante  tells  how 
he  was  busied  with  a  long,  carefully  con- 
ceived poem  in  celebration  of  her  beauty 
and  her  virtue,  and  had  composed  but 

22 


Da?ite  and  Beatrice 
one  stanza,  "  when  the  Lord  God  of  jus- 
tice called  my  most  gracious  lady  unto 
Himself,  that  she  might  be  glorious  under 
the  banner  of  tliat  blessed  Queen  Mary 
whose  name  had  always  a  deep  reverence 
in  the  words  of  holy  Beatrice."  Heaven 
had  need  of  her.  Earth  was  no  fit  place 
for  so  fair  a  spirit. 

A  love  such  as  Dante's,  dream-born 
and  dream-fed,  and  never  at  any  time 
nourished  on  the  realities  of  earthly  lov- 
ing, would  necessarily  be  intensified  by 
the  death  of  the  beloved.  That  mysteri- 
ous consecration  which  death  always 
brings  with  it  especially  transfigures  the 
memories  of  the  young  and  the  beautiful. 
She  had  come  nearer  to  him  rather  than 
gone  farther  away.  So,  at  least,  he  could 
feign  in  his  imagination,  where  he  was 
now  free  to  enthrone  her  forever  as  the 
bride  of  his  soul  —  without  the  thought  of 
any  Simon  de  Bardi  to  break  in  upon  his 
dream.  In  life  she  could  never  be  his,  but 
in  her  death  they  were  no  longer  divided. 


J 


Old  Love  Sto?'ies  Retold 

Yet  before  this  dream  could  grow  into  an 
assured  reality  for  him,  bringing  firmness  and 
peace  to  his  heart,  there  were  many  months  of 
bitter  human  grief  to  pass  through.  Beatrice 
was  indeed  a  saint  in  heaven,  but  ah!  she  no 
longer  walked  the  streets  of  Florence.  Like  any 
other  bereaved  lover,  he  sought  many  anodynes 
for  his  grief  —  some  unworthy  ones,  for  which 
his  conscience  reproached  him  at  the  time  and 
long  years  after.  With  the  instinct  of  the  poet, 
he  first  soup:ht  the  consolation  of  beautiful  words. 
As  some  men  fly  to  wine  in  sorrow,  the  poet  flies 
to  verse.  "When  my  eyes,"  he  says,  "had  wept 
for  some  while,  until  they  were  so  weary  with 
weeping  that  I  could  no  longer  through  them 
give  ease  to  my  sorrow,  I  bethought  me  that  a 
few  mournful  words  might  stand  me  instead  of 
tears.  And  therefore  I  proposed  to  make  a 
poem,  that  weeping  I  might  speak  therein  of  her 
for  whom  so  much  sorrow  had  destroyed  my 
spirit;  and  I  then  began  'The  eyes  that  weep.'" 


Beatrice  is  f?one  up  into  high  Heaven, 

The  kingdom  where  the  angels  are  at  peace; 
And  lives  with  them:  and  to  her  friends  is  dead. 


[U] 


Dante  and  Beatrice 

*'  Not  by  the  frost  of  winter  was  she  driven 
Away,  Hke  otliers;  nor  by  suninier-heats; 
But  thr()U<fh  a  perfect  gentleness,  instead. 
For  from  the  himp  of  her  meek  lowHhead 
Such  an  exceeding  glory  went  up  hence 
That  it  woke  wonder  in  the  Eternal  sire, 
Until  a  sweet  desire 
Entered  Him  for  that  lovely  excellence. 

So  that  He  bade  her  to  Himself  aspire; 
Counting  this  weary  and  most  evil  place 
Unworthy  of  a  thing  so  full  of  grace. 

"  Wonderfully  out  of  the  beautiful  form 

Soared  her  clear  spirit,  waxing  glad  the  while; 
And  is  in  its  first  home,  there  where  it  is. 
Who  speaks  thereof,  and  feels  not  the  tears  warm 
Upon  his  face,  must  have  become  so  vile 

As  to  be  dead  to  all  sweet  sympathies.  ..." 

Later,  he  tells  us  how  he  found  consolation  in 
the  sympathy  of  a  certain  "young  and  very 
beautiful  lady,"  consolation  so  tender  and  kind 
that  he  confesses,  in  self-reproach,  that  his  "eyes 
began  to  be  gladdened  overmuch  by  her  com- 
pany, through  which  thing  many  times  I  had 
much  unrest,  and  rebuked  myself  as  a  base 
person." 

That  he  also  experimented  with  the  commoner 
anodynes  of  grief  seems  certain  from  this  stern 
sonnet  addressed  to  him  by  his  first  of  friends, 
Guido  Cavalcanti: 

[25] 


Old  Love  Stof^ies  Retold 

I  come  to  thee  by  daytime  constantly. 

But  in  thy  thoughts  too  much  of  baseness  find: 
Greatly  it  grieves  me  for  thy  gentle  mind, 

And  for  thy  many  virtues  gone  from  thee. 

It  was  thy  wont  to  shun  much  company, 
Unto  all  sorry  concourse  ill  inclin'd: 
And  still  thy  speech  of  me,  heartfelt  and  kind. 

Had  made  me  treasure  up  thy  poetry. 

But  now  I  dare  not,  for  thine  a})ject  life, 
Make  manifest  that  I  approve  thy  rimes; 
Nor  come  I  in  such  sort  that  thou  mayst  know. 
Ah!  prythee  read  this  sonnet  many  times: 

So  shall  that  evil  one  who  bred  this  strife 

Be  thrust  from  thy  dishonoured  soul  and  go." 


That  Guido  Cavalcanti  did  not  write 
thus  without  cause,  is  proved  by  Beatrice's 
solemn  reproach  of  him  in  the  "  Purga- 
torio."  Indeed,  she  impUes  that  his  way 
of  Hfe  at  this  time  was  the  cause  of  his 
vision  of  the  Inferno : 

"So  low  he  fell,  that  all  appliances 
For  his  salvation  were  already  short. 
Save  showing  him  the  people  of  perdition." 

In  the  same  poem  he  admits: 


"  The  things  that  present  were 
With  their  false  pleasure  turned  aside  my  steps, 
Soon  as  your  countenance  concealed  itself." 


Dante  and  Beatrice 

But,  throuoli  all,  the  dream  of  his  love 
was  growing  more  bright  and  sure;  and 
soon  it  was  to  ascend  above  all  earthly 
fumes,  and  shine  down  on  him,  the  fixed 
guiding  star  of  a  Hfe  that,  in  its  turbulent 
vicissitudes  and  bitter  sorrows,  was,  more 
than  most,  to  need  the  sustaining  light  of 
such  a  spiritual  ideal. 

Dante  was  to  marry,  and  his  wife 
Gemma  was  to  bear  him  seven  children  — 
a  wife  who  cannot  have  been  unsym- 
pathetic to  his  dream,  for  she  allowed 
him  to  name  their  daughter  Beatrice; 
Florence  was  to  become  the  second  pas- 
sion of  his  life;  he  was  to  descend  into 
hell,  and  eat  the  bitter  bread  of  exile:  but 
through  all,  growing  brighter  with  the 
years,  shone  down  upon  his  rough  and 
devious  pathway  the  white  girl-star  of 
Beatrice.  His  first  love  was  his  last. 
Commentators  have  endeavoured  to  ex- 
plain her  away  as  a  metaphysical  sym- 
bol, and  Dante  himself  came  to  think  of 
Beatrice  as  an  impersonation  of  Divine 

27 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Wisdom.  In  tlie  close  of  liis  long  and  strenuous 
life,  it  might  well  seem  to  him  that  her  having 
lived  on  earth  at  all  was  a  dream  of  his  boyhood, 
so  far  away  that  dreaming  boyhood  of  the  "  Vita 
Nuova"  must  have  seemed;  but,  for  all  that, 
we  know  that  it  was  just  a  young  girl's  face  that 
led  this  strong  stern  man  of  iron  and  tears  safely 
through  his  pilgrimage  of  the  world. 

"All  ye  that  pass  along  Love's  trodden  way 
Pause  ye  awhile," 

and  meditate  upon  this  marvel. 


[28 


II 


Aucassin  and  Nicolete* 


THOUGH  the  song-story —  "  cante-f able  " 
—  "  C'est  d'x\ucassin  et  de  Nicolete,"  has 
long  had  an  antiquarian  interest  for  scholars,  it 
is  only  during  the  last  twenty  years  or  so  that  it 
has  taken  its  place  in  the  living  literature  of  the 
world,  and  given  two  of  the  most  fragrant  names 
to  the  mythology  of  lovers.  Monsieur  Bida  in 
France,  and  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  and  Mr.  F.  W. 
Bourdillon  in  England,  are  to  be  thanked  for 
rescuing  this  precious  pearl  from  the  dust-heaps 
of  philological  learning.  In  England  Mr.  Bour- 
dillon was  first  with  a  very  graceful  and  scholarly 
translation.  Walter  Pater  in  his  famous  essays 
on   "  The   Renaissance "   early   directed  to  it  the 

*  Though  Aucassin  and  Nicolete  are  not  historically 
authenticated  lovers,  being  the  children  of  a  troubadour's 
imagination,  I  have  ventured  to  include  their  story, 
because  they  have  long  since  been  real  to  us  —  through 
romance. 

[29] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
attention  of  amateurs  of  such  literary 
delicacies;  but  practically  Mr.  Lang  is 
its  sponsor  in  English,  by  virtue  of  a 
translation  which  for  freshness  and  grace 
and  tender  beauty  may  well  take  the 
place  of  the  original  with  those  of  us  for 
whom  Old  French  has  its  difficulties. 
Nine  years  before,  Mr.  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman  had  introduced  the  lovers  to 
American  readers  in  "A  Masque  of 
Poets."  There  in  a  single  lyric  Mr.  Sted- 
man has  so  skilfully  concentrated  the 
romance  of  the  old  story  that  I  venture 
to  quote  from  it,  particularly  as  Mr. 
Stedman  has  done  readers  of  his  poetry 
the  mysterious  unkindness  of  omitting 
it  from  his   collected  poems: 


Within  the  garden  of  Biaiicaire 
He  met  her  by  a  secret  stair,  — 
The  night  was  centuries  ago. 
Said  Aucassin,  'My  love,  my  pet, 
These  old  confessors  vex  me  so! 
They  threaten  all  the  pains  of  hell 
Unless  I  give  you  up,  ma  belle,'  — 
Said  Aucassin  to  Nicolette. 


Aucassin  and  Nicokte 

***Now,  who  should  there  in  heaven  be 
To  fill  your  phice,  ma  tres-douce  mie? 
To  reach  that  spot  I  httle  care! 
There  all  the  droning  priests  are  met;  — 
All  the  old  cripples,  too,  are  there 
That  unto  shrines  and  altars  cliniij, 
To  filch  the  Peter-pence  we  bring';  — 
Said  Aucassin  to  Nicolette. 

*"To  purgatory  I  would  go 

With  pleasant  comrades  whom  we  know, 
Fair  scholars,  minstrels,  lusty  knights 
Whose  deeds  the  land  will  not  forget. 
The  captains  of  a  hundred  fights, 
The  men  of  valor  and  degree: 
We'll  join  that  gallant  company,'  — • 
Said  Aucassin  to  Nicolette. 

" '  Sweet  players  on  the  cithern  strings 
And  they  who  roam  the  world  like  kings 
Are  gathered  there,  so  blithe  and  free ! 
Pardie!     I'd  join  them  now,  my  pet, 
If  you  went  also,  ma  douce  mie! 
The  joys  of  heaven  I'd  forego 
To  have  you  with  me  there  below,'  — 
Said  Aucassin  to  Nicolette." 


Here  the  three  notes  of  the  old  song 
story  are  admirably  struck:  the  force  and 
freshness  of  young  passion,  the  trouba- 
dourish  sweetness  of  literary  manner,  the 
rebellious  humanity.  Young  love  has 
ever  been  impatient  of  the  middle-aged 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
wisdom  of  the  world,  and  fiercely  resisted  the 
pious  or  practical  restraints  to  its  happiness; 
hut  perhaps  the  rebelliousness  of  young  hearto 
has  never  been  so  audaciously  expressed  as  in 
"Aucassin  and  Nicolete."  The  absurdity  of 
parents  who,  after  all  these  generations  of  ex- 
perience, still  confidently  oppose  themselves  to 
that  omnipotent  passion  which  Holy  Writ  itself 
tells  us  many  waters  cannot  quench ;  the  absurdity 
of  thin-l)looded,  chilly  old  maids  of  both  sexes 
who  would  have  us  believe  that  this  warm- 
hearted ecstasy  is  an  evil  thing,  and  that  prayer 
and  fasting  are  better  worth  doing  —  not  in  the 
most  "  pagan "  literature  of  our  own  time  have 
these  twin  absurdities  been  assailed  with  more 
outspoken  contempt  than  in  this  naif  old  ro- 
mance of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  Count 
Bougars  de  Valence  is  at  war  with  Count  Garin 
de  Biaucaire.  The  town  of  Biaucaire  is  closely 
besieged  and  its  Count  is  in  despair,  for  he  is  an 
old  man,  and  his  son  Aucassin,  who  should  take 
his  place,  is  so  overtaken  with  a  hopeless  passion 
that  he  sits  in  a  lovesick  dream,  refusing  to  put 
on  his  armour  or  to  take  any  part  in  the  defense 
[32] 


Aucassin  mid  Nicolete 

of  the  town.  His  father  reproaches  him,  and 
how  absolutely  of  our  own  day  rings  his  half- 
bored,  half -impatient  answer.  " '  Father,'  said 
Aucassin,  '  I  marvel  that  you  w  ill  be  speaking. 
Never  may  God  give  me  aught  of  my  desire  if  I 
be  made  knight,  or  mount  my  horse,  or  face  stour 
and  battle  wherein  knights  smite  and  are  smitten 
again,  unless  thou  give  me  Nicolete,  my  true 
love,  that  I  love  so  well.   .  .  .'  " 

Father  —  cant  you  understand  ?  How^  strange 
old  people  are !     Don't  you  see  how  it  is  ? 

*'  Father,  I  marvel  that  you  will  be  speaking ! " 
It  is  the  eternal  exclamation,  the  universal  shrug, 
of  youth  confronted  by  *'  these  tedious  old  fools ! " 

Now  Nicolete  is  no  proper  match  for  Aucassin, 
a  great  Count's  son  —  though,  naturally,  in 
Aucassin's  opinion,  "  if  she  were  Empress  of 
Constantinople  or  of  Germany,  or  Queen  of 
France  or  England,  it  w^ere  little  enough  for  her  " 
—  because  she  is  "  the  slave  girl "  of  the  Count's 
own  Captain-at-arms,  who  had  bought  her  of 
the  Saracens,  reared,  christened  and  adopted  her 
as  his  "daughter-in-God."  Actually  she  is  the 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Carthage,  though  no 
[33] 


Ik. 


:3 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
one  in  Biaucaire,  not  even  herself,  knows 
of  her  high  birth.  The  reader,  of  course, 
woukl  naturally  guess  as  much,  for  no 
polite  jongleur  of  the  Middle  Ages,  ad- 
dressing, as  he  did,  an  audience  of  the 
highest  rank,  would  admit  into  his 
stories  any  but  heroes  and  heroines  with 
the  finest  connections. 

Father  and  son  by  turns  have  an  inter- 
view with  the  Captain.  The  Captain 
promises  the  Count  to  send  Nicolete  into 
a  far  country,  and  the  story  goes  in 
Biaucaire  that  she  is  lost,  or  made  away 
with  by  the  order  of  the  Count.  The 
Captain,  however,  having  an  affection 
for  his  adopted  daughter,  and  being  a 
rich  man,  secretes  her  high  up  in  "  a  rich 
palace  with  a  garden  in  face  of  it."  To 
him  comes  Aucassin  asking  for  news  of 
his  lady.  The  Captain,  with  whose 
dilemma  it  is  possible  for  any  one  not 
in  his  first  youth  to  sympathize,  lectures 
Aucassin  not  unkindly  after  the  pre- 
scribed  formulas.     It   is   impossible__for 

34 


Aiicass'm  and  Nicolete 

Aucassin  to  inarrv  Nicolete,  and  were  lie 
less  honest,  hell  would  he  his  portion  and 
Paradise  closed  against  him  forever.  It 
is  in  answer  to  this  adniirahle  common 
sense  that  Aucassin  flashes  out  his  famous 
defiance.  "  Paradise ! "  he  laughs  —  "  in 
Paradise  what  have  I  to  win  .^  Therein  I 
seek  not  to  enter,  but  only  to  have  Nico- 
lete, my  sweet  lady  that  I  love  so  well. 
For  into  Paradise  go  none  but  such  folk 
as  I  shall  tell  thee  now:  Thither  go  these 
same  old  priests,  and  halt  old  men  and 
maimed,  who  all  day  and  night  cower  con- 
tinually before  the  altars  and  in  the  crypts; 
and  such  folk  as  wear  old  amices  and  old 
clouted  frocks,  and  naked  folk  and  shoe- 
less, and  covered  with  sores,  perishing  of 
hunger  and  thirst,  and  of  cold,  and  of 
little  ease.  These  be  they  that  go  into 
Paradise,  with  them  have  I  naught  to 
make.  But  into  hell  would  I  fain  go; 
for  into  hell  fare  the  goodly  clerks,  and 
goodly  knights  that  fall  in  tourneys  and 
great  wars,  and  stout  men-at-arms,  and 


33" 


Old  hove  Stones  Retold 

all  men  nohle.  With  these  would  I  liefly  go. 
And  thither  pass  the  sweet  ladies  and  courteous 
tliat  have  two  lovers,  or  three,  and  their  lords 
also  thereto.  Thither  go  the  gold,  and  the  silver, 
and  cloth  of  vair,  and  cloth  of  gris,  and  harpers, 
and  makers,  and  the  princes  of  this  world.  With 
these  I  would  gladly  go,  let  me  but  have  with  me 
Nicolete,  my  sweetest  lady." 

Aucassin's  defiance  of  priests  as  well  as  parents 
is  something  more  significant  than  the  impulsive 
utterance  of  wilful  youth.  It  is  at  once,  as  Pater 
has  pointed  out,  illustrative  of  that  humanistic 
revolt  against  the  ideals  of  Christian  asceticism 
which  even  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  already  be- 
ginning —  a  revolt  openly  acknowledged  in  the 
so-called  Renaissance  —  and  a  revolt  growingly 
characteristic  of  our  own  time.  The  gospel  of 
the  Joy  of  Life  is  no  mere  heresy  to-day.  Rather 
it  may  be  said  to  be  the  prevailing  faith.  Aucas- 
sin's spirited  speech  is  no  longer  a  lonely  protest. 
It  has  become  a  creed. 

Finding  Aucassin  unshaken  in  his  determina- 
tion, the  Count  his  father  bribes  him  with  a 
promise  that,  if  he  will  take  the  field,  he  shall  be 
[36] 


Nicolete  Weighs  How  She  May  Escape  from  the  Tower 


AucassiJi  iijid  Nicolcte 
permitted  to  see  Nicolete  — "  even  so  long," 
Aucassin  stipulates,  "  tliat  I  may  have  of  her  two 
words  or  three,  and  one  kiss."  The  compact 
made,  Aucassin  does  so  mightily  '*  with  his  hands  " 
against  the  enemy  that  he  raises  the  siege  and 
takes  prisoner  the  Count  Bougars  de  Valence. 
But  the  father  refuses  the  agreed  reward  —  and 
here,  after  the  charming  manner  of  the  old  story- 
teller himself,  we  may  leave  prose  awhile  and 
continue  the  story  in  verse  —  the  correct  formula 
is  "  Here  one  singeth  " : 

"When  the  Count  Garin  doth  know 

That  his  child  would  ne'er  forego 

Love  of  her  that  loved  him  so, 

Nicolete,  the  bright  of  brow. 

In  a  dungeon  deep  below 

Childe  Aucassin  did  he  throw. 

Even  there  the  Childe  must  dwell 

In  a  dun-walled  marble  cell. 

There  he  waileth  in  his  woe, 

Crying  thus  as  ye  shall  know: 
'Nicolete,  thou  lily  white, 

My  sweet  lady,  bright  of  brow, 

Sweeter  than  the  grape  art  thou, 

Sweeter  than  sack  posset  good 

In  a  cup  of  maple  wood  .  .  . 

"'My  sweet  lady,  lily  white. 

Sweet  thy  footfall,  sweet  thine  eyes. 
And  the  mirth  of  thy  replies. 

[37] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

** '  Sweet  thy  ljiu<ijhter,  sweet  thy  face, 
Sweet  thy  hps  and  sweet  tliy  brow. 
And  the  touch  of  thy  enil)race. 
Who  but  doth  in  thee  dehght? 
I  for  love  of  thee  am  bound 
In  this  dungeon  underground, 
All  for  loving  thee  must  lie 
Here  where  loud  on  thee  I  cry, 
Here  for  loving  thee  must  die. 
For  thee,  my  love.'" 

Now  Nicolete  is  no  less  whole-hearted 
and  indomitable  in  her  love  than  Aucas- 
sin.  She  is  like  a  prophecy  of  Rosalind 
in  her  adventurous,  full-blooded  girl- 
hood. When  her  master  has  locked  her 
up  in  the  tower,  she  loses  no  time  in  mak- 
ing a  vigorous  escape  by  that  ladder  of 
knotted  bedclothes  without  which  ro- 
mance could  hardly  have  gone  on  exist- 
ing. Who  that  has  read  it  can  forget  the 
picture  of  her  as  she  slips  down  into  the 
moonlit  garden,  and  kilts  up  her  kirtle 
"because  of  the  dew  that  she  saw  lying 
deep  on  the  grass  "  ?  — 

"  Her  locks  were  yellow  and  curled, 
her  eyes  blue  and  smiling,  her  face  featly 
fashioned,  the  nose  high  and  fairly  set, 


Aucassin  and  Nicolctc 
the  lips  more  red  tlian  cherry  or  rose  in 
time  of  summer,  lier  teeth  white  and 
small;  her  breasts  so  firm  that  they  bore 
up  the  folds  of  her  bodice  as  they  had 
been  two  apples;  so  slim  she  was  in  the 
waist  that  your  two  hands  might  have 
clipped  her,  and  the  daisy  flowers  that 
brake  beneath  her  as  she  went  tiptoe,  and 
that  bent  above  her  instep,  seemed  black 
against  her  feet,  so  white  was  the  maiden." 
As  Nicolete  steals  in  the  moonlight  to 
the  ruinous  tower  where  her  lover  lies,  she 
hears  him  "wailing  within,  and  making 
dole  and  lament  for  the  sweet  lady  he 
loves  so  well."  The  lovers  snatch  a  peril- 
ous talk,  while  the  town's  guards  pass 
down  the  street  with  drawn  swords  seek- 
ing Nicolete,  but  not  remarking  her 
crouched  in  the  shadow  of  the  tower. 
How  Nicolete  makes  good  her  escape  into 
the  wildwood  and  builds  a  bower  of 
woven  boughs  with  her  own  hands,  and 
how  Aucassin  finds  her  there,  and  the  joy 
they  have,  and  their  wandering  together  in 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

strange  lands,  their  losing  each  other  once  more, 
and  their  final  happy  finding  of  each  other  again 
—  "  by  God's  will  who  loveth  lovers "  —  is  not 
all  this  written  in  the  Book  of  Love  ?  — 

"Sweet  the  song,  the  story  sweet. 
There  is  no  man  hearkens  it, 
No  man  living  'neath  the  sun 
So  outwearied,  so  foredone, 
Sick  and  woful,  worn  and  sad. 
But  is  healed,  but  is  glad, 
'Tis  so  sweet." 

The  story  is  simple  enough,  of  a  pattern  old 
and  familiar  as  love  itself,  but  the  telling  of  it  is 
a  rare  achievement  of  artistry,  that  artistry  which 
is  so  accomplished  as  to  be  able  to  imitate  sim- 
plicity; for,  roughly  connected  as  are  certain 
parts  of  the  story,  "Aucassin  and  Nicolete"  in 
the  main  is  evidently  the  work  of  one  who  was  a 
true  poet  and  an  exquisite  literary  craftsman. 
The  curious,  almost  unique,  form  of  it  is  one  of 
its  most  characteristic  charms;  for  it  is  written 
alternately  in  prose  and  verse.  The  verse  some- 
times repeats  in  a  condensed  form  what  has 
already  been  related  in  the  prose,  sometimes 
elaborates  upon  it,  and  sometimes  carries  on  the 
[40] 


Aucassin  Finds  Nicolete  in  a  Bower  in  tJie  Wood, 


i 


Aucassiii  and  Nicokte 
story  independently.  The  formula  with  which 
the  prose  is  introduced  is :  "So  say  they,  speak 
they,  tell  they  the  Tale,"  and  the  formula  for 
introducing  the  verse,  as  already  noted,  is: 
''  Here  one  singeth."  These  formulas,  and  the 
fact  that  the  music  for  some  of  the  songs  has  come 
down  to  us  on  the  precious  unique  manuscript 
preserved  in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  lead 
critics  to  think  that  the  romance  was  probably 
presented  by  a  company  of  jongleurs,  with  music, 
and  possibly  with  some  dramatic  action.  The 
author  is  unknown,  and  the  only  reference  to 
him  is  his  own  in  the  opening  song: 

"Who  would  list  to  the  good  lay. 
Gladness  of  the  captive  gray  ?  " 

M.  Gaston  Paris  suggests  that  the  '*  viel  caitif  " 

lived  and  wrote  in  the  time  of  Louis  VII.  (1130), 

and   Mr.    Lang   draws   a   pretty   picture   of   the 

"elderly,    nameless    minstrel    strolling    with    his 

viol    and    his    singing-boys  .  .  .  from    castle    to 

castle  in  'the  happy  poplar  land.'"     Beaucaire 

is   better  known   nowadays   for  its   ancient   fair 

than  for  its  lovers.     According  to  tradition,  that 

fair  has  been  held  annually  for  something  like  a 

[41] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
thousand  years  —  and  our  lovers  have 
been  dead  almost  as  long.  Still,  thanks 
to  the  young  heart  of  that  unknown  old 
troubadour,  their  love  is  as  fresh  as  a 
may-bush  in  his  songs,  the  dew  is  still 
on  the  moonlit  daisies  where  Nicolete's 
white  feet  have  just  passed,  and  her 
bower  in  the  wildwood  is  as  green  as  the 
day  she  wove  it  out  of  boughs  and 
flowers.  As  another  old  poet  has  sung, 
"the  world  might  find  the  spring  by 
following  her "  —  so  exquisitely  vernal 
is  the  spirit  that  breathes  from  this  old 
song  story.  To  read  in  it  is  to  take  the 
advice  given  to  Aucassin  by  a  certain 
knight.  "  Aucassin,"  said  the  knight, 
"of  that  sickness  of  thine  have  I  been 
sick,  and  good  counsel  will  I  give  thee 
.  .  .  mount  thy  horse,  and  go  take  thy 
pastime  in  yonder  forest,  there  wilt  thou 
see  the  good  flowers  and  grass,  and  hear 
the  sweet  birds  sing.  Perchance  thou 
shalt  hear  some  word,  Avhereby  thou  shalt 
be  the  better." 


i 


Aucassin  and  Nicolcte 
The  reader  will   do   well  to  take  the 
knight's  advice,  and  follow  into  the  wood- 
land "  the  fair  white  feet  of  Nicolete." 


mm 


43 


;s?^^:^^-^>^;;>^;s.^^;i»:^;i>^^5>^^5i.^;i?^^.;j>;^^>^?>^^>^-?>:s^>^^>^.^s.^ 


Ill 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Lady  Penelope 
Devereux 

'f 

IT  is  strange  that  a  love  story  connected  with 
so  illustrious  a  name  as  that  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  should,  practically,  be  forgotten.  Sidney 
lives  in  the  popular  imagination  by  the  famous 
anecdote  of  the  cup  of  cold  water,  and  as  the 
type  of  all  that  was  gallant  and  gentle  in  the 
Elizabethan  gentleman.  But  it  is  doubtful 
whether,  in  spite  of  Charles  Lamb's  attempt  to 
refresh  the  memory  of  time,  any  one,  outside 
scholars  and  enthusiasts  for  the  old-fashioned 
gardens  of  English  poetry,  ever  reads  either  his 
once  famous  romance  of  "  Arcadia  "  or  his  much 
more  important  poems.  Sonnet  anthologies 
usually  contain  the  sonnet,  "  With  how  sad  steps, 
O  Moon,  thou  climb'st  the  sky,"  but  the  sequence 
of  which  it  is  but  one  constituent,  that  fascinat- 
ing, heartfelt  sequence  of  sonnets  and  songs  which 
tells  of  the  loves  of  "Astrophel  and  Stella,"  is, 
[44] 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereux 
I  imagine,  very  seldom  taken  from  its  dusty  shelf. 
Yet,  what  an  ever-fragrant  garden  it  is,  and  how 
vividly  its  old  passionate  story  still  tells  itself  in 
the  old,  ever  young,  words. 

Doubtless  it  suffers  with  the  general  reader 
from  its  old  spelling  and  its  euphuistic  coneeits, 
and  its  general  air  of  archaism.  Nothing 
frightens  your  general  reader  like  long  "  s's " 
and  unnecessary  "e's."  It  may  be  said  that 
when  a  poet  is  great  enough,  he  is  sure  to  be 
printed  without  these  marks  of  the  antiquity 
from  which  he  comes.  Shakespeare's  sonnets, 
for  example,  are  in  their  original  spelling  no  less 
ruffed  and  doubleted  than  Sidney's,  but  we  know 
them  in  the  spelling  of  our  own  time.  Chaucer, 
however,  is  a  great  poet  whom  we  have  to  take 
as  he  himself  spelled  or  not  at  all.  And  so  with 
Sidney  —  though,  of  course,  his  archaism  is 
nothing  like  so  difficult.  Actually,  of  course,  to 
the  true  lover  of  old  poetry  there  is  a  positive 
charm  in  the  quaint  look  of  the  old  spelling,  and 
a  real  gain  in  atmosphere.  There  is,  too,  some- 
thing naive  and  appealing  about  it,  similar  to 
the  charm  that  sometimes  belongs  to  the  accent 
[45] 


t 


5 


OA/  Love  Stones  Retold 
of  a  foreigner  talking  English.     It  is  the 
fascinating   broken   accent   of   antiquity. 
Take  this  sonnet  with  which  the  love- 
journal  of  "  Astrophel  and  Stella  "  opens : 

*' Loving  in  truth,  and  faine  in  verse  my  love  to 
show. 
That  she,  deare  She,  might  take  some  pleasure 
of  my  paine,  — 
Pleasure  might  cause  her  reade,  reading  might 
make  her  know, 
Knowledge  might  pitie  winne,  and  pitie  grace 
obtaine,  — 
I  sought  fit  words  to  paint  the  blackest  face  of 
woe; 
Studying  inventions  fine,  her  wits  to  entertaine, 
Oft  turning  other's  leaves,  to  see  if  thence  would 
flow 
Some  fresh  and  fruitfull  showers  upon  my  sunne- 
burn'd  braine. 
But  words  came  halting  forth,  wanting  Inven- 
tion's stay; 
Invention,     Nature's     child,     fled     step-dame 
Studie's  blowes; 
And  others'  feete  still  seem'd  but  strangers  in  my 
way. 
Thus,  great  with  childe  to  speak,  and  helplesse 
in  my  throwes, 
Biting  my  trewand  pen,  beating  myselfe  for  spite; 
Foole,  said  my  Muse  to  me,  looke  in  thy  heart, 
and  write." 

Thus  Sidney  looked  into  his  heart  and 
wrote,  so  sincerely  and  simply  that  we, 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereux 
all  these  years  after,  can,  if  we  care,  look- 
ing into  his  book,  look  into  his  heart  also. 
Many  of  the  sonnets  are  affected  after  the 
manner  of  the  time,  stuck  full  of  "vain 
amatorious"  fancies,  as  Milton  said,  })ut 
no  more  so  than  Shakespeare's  own,  and 
very  soon,  underneath  all  the  literary  laces 
and  fripperies,  we  are  aware  of  a  brave 
heart  beating,  and  almost  breaking,  with 
a  love  "  that  never  found  its  earthly  close." 
Certain  editors  and  biographers  have 
protested  against  the  natural  interpretation 
of  Sidney's  sonnets,  as  interested  editors 
and  biographers  will,  but  the  editor  of 
Sidney  whose  opinion  matters  most,  Mr. 
A.  W.  Pollard,  is  in  favor  of  the  natural 
reading.  Most  editors  seem  to  consider 
it  a  point  of  honour  to  whitewash  their 
heroes  out  of  all  their  common  humanity 
and  to  reduce  them  as  much  as  possible 
to  models  of  abstract  power  and  perfec- 
tion. In  Sidney's  case,  some  of  us  may 
find  a  character  of  such  legendary  ex- 
cellence gain  rather  than  lose   by  a  story 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

wliicli  reveals  him  possessed  too  of  like  human 
passion  and  frailty  with  ourselves.  Sidney's 
grace  and  gentleness,  as  often  happens  with 
people  of  gentle  manners  and  delicate  natures, 
have  somewhat  unfairly  sweetened  and  sanctified 
his  memory,  so  that  the  world  has  forgotten  that 
he  was  a  brave  soldier  as  well  as  a  graceful 
courtier;  a  man  of  stern  moral  courage  —  as 
witness  his  outspoken  criticism  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's proposed  Spanish  match;  an  impulsive 
and  intrepid  antagonist  —  as  witness  his  un- 
accepted challenge  to  the  brutal  and  bullying 
Earl  of  Oxford;  and  a  fiery  and  fearless  lover 
whose  passion  was  far  from  expending  itself  in 
sonnets. 

It  appears  probable  that  Astrophel  first  set 
eyes  upon  his  Stella  in  the  summer  of  1575,  at 
Chartley  Castle,  the  seat  of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  on 
the  occasion  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  visit  there. 
Sidney,  though  as  yet  not  twenty-one,  was  already 
a  gallant  and  accomplished  figure  at  court,  and 
persona  grata  with  the  Queen,  in  whose  train  he 
arrived  at  Chartley,  fresh  from  Kenilworth  and 
those  historic  festivities  of  his  magnificent  uncle, 
[iS] 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereiix 
the  Earl  of  Leicester.  The  httle  Lady  Penelope 
Devereux,  eldest  daughter  of  his  host  and  hostess, 
was  only  twelve,  but  already  of  a  strange  and 
striking  beauty.  Being,  too,  as  her  subsequent 
career  proved,  of  a  romantic  temperament,  she 
could  hardly  fail  to  have  been  interested  in  the 
brilliant  young  courtier,  though  indeed,  so  far 
as  we  can  judge,  neither  Sidney  nor  she  appears 
to  have  fallen  in  love  at  first  sight.  Sidney 
definitely  speaks  for  himself  on  this  point  in  his 
second  sonnet: 

Not  at  the  first  sight,  nor  with  a  dribbed  shot, 
Love  gave  the  wound,  which,  while  I  breathe, 

\\\\\  bleed; 
But  knowne  worth  did  in  mine  of  time  proceed. 

Till  by  degrees  it  had  full  conquest  got. 

I  saw,  and  liked;  I  liked,  but  loved  not; 

I  loved,  but  straight  did  not  what  Love  decreed : 
At  length,  to  Love's  decrees  I,  forc'd,  agreed. 

Yet  with  repining  at  so  partiall  lot." 

And  there  seems  good  reason  to  think  that 
Penelope's  love  was  of  even  still  slower  growth. 
Nevertheless,  Sidney  appears  to  have  lost  no 
time  in  following  up  the  acquaintance  thus  be- 
gun at  Chartley,  and  very  soon  we  find  him  a 
frequent  visitor  at  Durham  House  and  high  in 
[49] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
the  afFcctions  of  Penelope's  father,  who, 
it  is  said,  was  wont  to  call  him  his  "son 
by  adoption  "  and  who,  on  his  death-bed, 
in  the  September  of  1576  —  when  Sidney 
was  hastening  toward  him,  to  arrive, 
alas !  too  late  —  left  him  this  touching 
message:  "Oh,  that  good  gentleman, 
have  me  commended  unto  him.  And 
tell  him  I  sent  him  nothing,  but  I  wish 
him  well  —  so  well,  that  if  God  do  move 
their  hearts,  I  wish  that  he  might  match 
with  my  daughter.  I  call  him  son  —  he 
is  so  wise,  virtuous,  and  godly.  If  he 
go  on  in  the  course  he  hath  begun,  he 
will  be  as  famous  and  worthy  a  gentle- 
man as  ever  England  bred." 

It  appears  soon  to  have  been  common 
talk  at  court  that  the  dying  Earl's  wish 
was  to  take,  or  had  already  taken,  the 
form  of  a  definite  engagement.  So 
matters  stood  in  the  autumn  of  1576, 
when  the  darkness  of  time  suddenly  falls 
upon  the  story,  and  the  historian  is  left 
to  conjecture;   till  once   more,   in   1581, 


Sir  Philip  Sid?iey  &  Lady  Devereux 
the  startling  fact  emerges  that  Penelope 
has  been  married,  not  to  Sidney,  but  to 
Lord  Rich,  a  man  of  very  different  type, 
coarse  and  cruel,  and,  it  would  appear, 
by  no  means  Penelope's  own  choice. 
There  exists  a  letter  from  the  Earl  of 
Devonshire  to  James  I.  in  which  the 
Earl  states  that,  Penelope  "being  in  the 
power  of  her  friends,  she  was  by  them 
married  against  her  will  unto  one  against 
whom  she  did  protest  at  the  very  solemnity 
and  ever  after."  The  reason  of  this  en- 
forced marriage  is  very  plausibly  sug- 
gested by  Mr.  Pollard,  who  has  pieced 
together  the  whole  story  with  skill.  Two 
years  after  her  husband's  death,  the 
Dowager  Countess  of  Essex  (that  is, 
Penelope's  mother)  was  married  to 
Philip's  uncle,  the  Earl  of  Leicester.  Up 
to  that  time  Philip  had  been  his  uncle's 
heir,  and,  therefore,  one  of  the  best 
matches  in  England,  but  with  that  mar- 
riage and  the  subsequent  arrival  of  a 
cousin,  Philip,  as  Mr.  Pollard  points  out, 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
became  a  poor,  even  a  very  j)oor,  gentleman. 
Penelope's  mother  and  friends  might,  therefore, 
be  anxious  to  find  her  a  wealthier  husband.  So 
]Mr.  Pollard,  with  great  pro})ability,  accounts 
for  Lord  Rich's  place  in  the  story.  Surely,  if 
this  conjecture  be  correct,  it  must  have  seemed 
the  bitterest  of  ironies  for  the  two  lovers  that  the 
marriage  of  Stella's  mother  to  her  lover's  uncle 
should  thus  destroy  the  happiness  of  their  lives. 
Whether  or  not  Philip  and  Penelope  had  been 
formally  engaged  during  this  interval,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  he  and  she  saw  much  of  each  other  at 
the  houses  of  mutual  relatives  and  friends,  and 
that  they  Avere  still  seeing  each  other  in  the  sum- 
mer and  the  late  autumn  of  1580.  Though  the 
love  up  till  then  seems  to  have  been  mainly,  if  not 
entirely,  on  Sidney's  side,  and  Penelope's  atti- 
tude rather  that  of  a  coquette,  attracted  but  still 
unwon,  there  seems  no  reason  for  thinking  that 
Lord  Rich  was  as  yet  a  factor  in  her  future ;  and, 
indeed,  her  forced  marriage  with  him  may  have 
come  to  her  with  no  less  shock  of  cruel  surprise 
than  it  appears  to  have  come  with  to  Sidney  him- 
self. Judging  by  one  of  Sidney's  songs,  his  first 
[52] 


Portrait  of  Sidney  in  Armor 
From  Original  Engraving 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereux 
anger  seems  to  have  been  directed  against  Penel- 
ope herself,  and  one  may  add  that  a  man  of 
Sidney's  calibre  would  hardly  inveigh  against  a 
woman  in  the  fashion  of  this  stanza  without  her 
having  given  him  the  excuse  of  at  least  great 
hopes  of  her  love: 

"Ring  out  your  belles,  let  mourning  shewes  be  spread; 
For  Love  is  dead: 

All  Love  is  dead,  infected 
With  plague  of  deep  disdaine: 

Worth,  as  nought  worth,  rejected. 
And  Faith  faire  scorne  doth  gaine. 

From  so  ungratefull  fancie. 

From  such  a  femall  franzie, 

From  them  that  use  men  thus, 

Good  Lord,  deliver  us!" 

Before  writing  the  last  stanza  of  the  poem, 
however,  which  reads  like  a  postscript,  Sidney 
appears  to  have  realized  the  truth:  that  Stella 
was  not  unfaithful  to  him,  but  that  she,  rather 
than  he,  was  the  victim: 

"Alas,  I  lie:  rage  hath  this  errour  bred; 
Love  is  not  dead ; 

Love  is  not  dead,  but  sleepeth 
In  her  unmatched  mind. 

Where  she  his  counsell  keepeth. 
Till  due  desert  she  find. 

[53] 


1 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

"  Therefore  from  so  vile  fancie, 
To  call  sucli  wit  a  franzie. 
Who  Love  can  temper  thus, 
Good  Lord,  deHver  us!" 

And,  witli  tlie  realization  that  she  was 
in  no  true  sense  the  wife  of  Lord  Rich, 
he  seems  to  have  determined  that  such 
a  so-called  marriage  should  be  no  bar 
to  his  true  love,  but  that  Penelope 
Devereux  virtually,  and  even  virtuously, 
remained  Penelope  Devereux  still;  a 
woman  still  honourably  to  be  wooed  and 
rightfully  to  be  won.  So,  at  least,  it 
seems  natural  to  interpret  this  stanza 
which  concludes  a  poem  entitled  "The 
Smokes  of  Melancholy": 

"For  me,  alas,  I  am  full  resolv'd 
Those  bands,  alas,  shall  not  be  dissolv'd; 
Nor  breake  my  word,  though  reward  come  late; 
Nor  faile  my  faith  in  my  failing  fate;  • 
Nor  change  in  change,   though  change  change 

my  state: 
But  alwayes  one  myselfe  with  eagle  eyde  Trueth, 

to  flie 
Up  to  the  sunne,  although  the  sunne  my  wings 

do  frie; 
For  if  those  flames  burne  my  desire. 
Yet  shall  I  die  in  PhoenLx'  fire." 


54 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereux 
That  Sidney  followed  ii})  this  resolve 
with  a  determination  whieh  liad  perhaps 
never  before  marked  his  wooing  is  proved 
by  something  like  two-thirds  of  the  entire 
"  xVstrophel  and  Stella."  In  these  sonnets 
and  songs  the  story  of  his  heart  can  be 
read,  as  it  were,  from  day  to  day.  And  if 
we  can  judge  by  two  outspoken  sonnets 
punning  on  the  hated  name  of  Rich,  he 
appears  to  have  made  no  secret  of  his 
hatred  for  the  man  who  had  bought  the 
woman  he  loved  against  her  will.  Here 
is  one  of  them : 

"Toward  Aurora's  Court  a  nymph  doth  dwell. 

Rich  in  all  beauties  which  man's  eye  can  see; 

Beauties  so  farre  from  reach  of  words,  that  we 
Abase  her  praise  saying  she  doth  excel!; 
Rich  in  the  treasure  of  deserv'd  renowne, 

Rich  in  the  riches  of  a  royall  hart. 
Rich  in  those  gifts  which  give  th'  eternall  crowne; 

Who,  though  most  rich  in  these  and  everie  part 
Which  make  the  patents  of  true  worldly  bhsse, 
Hath  no  misfortune  but  that  Rich  she  is." 

If  no  true  blame  attaches  to  Sidney 
for  his  refusal  to  recognize  such  a  mar- 
riage, surely  it  was  not  wrong  in  Penelope 

55 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
(who,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  so  lately  a 
woman  —  she  was  only  eighteen  on  her  marriage) 
to  realize  for  the  first  time  by  the  cruel  contrast 
of  her  marriage  what  she  had  lost  by  her  possible 
previous  coquetry  with  Sidney,  and  to  give  to 
his  wooing  a  value  and  a  hearing  such  as,  in  her 
unawakened,  irresponsible  girlhood,  she  had 
never  thought  or  cared  to  give  it  before.  A  girl 
married,  as  she  was  married,  brutally  against 
her  will,  could  hardly  be  blamed  for  even  more 
serious  forms  of  rebellion  than  giving  ear  to  a 
noble  lover  whom  too  late  she  had  learned  to 
love.  We  can,  therefore,  do  no  injustice  to 
Penelope  in  deducing  from  Sidney's  sonnets  that 
it  was  not  till  after  she  became  Lady  Rich  that 
her  love  for  Sidney  really  awoke.  We  may  do 
this  with  the  less  fear  of  injustice  for  two  good 
reasons.  Sidney  was  not  the  man  to  pursue 
Stella  with  a  love  which  she  had  manifestly  and 
definitely  shown  him  she  did  not  desire;  nor, 
therefore,  was  he  the  man  to  write  falsely  about 
the  incidents  of  his  wooing,  even  in  the  licensed 
form  of  the  sonnet.  Again,  everything  he  tells 
us  is  eminently  in  Stella's  favour.  He  reveals 
[56] 


Sh^  Philip  Sid?iey  &  Lady  Devereux 
indeed  that,  after  patient  importunity,  he  had 
persuaded  her  to  acknowledge  her  love,  but  he 
reveals  too  with  what  reluctance  the  confession 
had  been  drawn  from  her,  how  innocent  were 
the  tokens  she  had  given  of  her  love,  and  how 
she  had  striven  with  his  more  lawless  passion  — 
striven,  as  the  lofty  feeling  and  resolution  of  the 
concluding  sonnets  prove,  with  a  gentle  firmness 
far  from  in  vain. 

To  illustrate  the  story  by  adequate  quotations 
would  take  up  too  much  space,  and  indeed  many 
of  the  sonnets  most  significant  historically  are 
of  least  worth  poetically,  and  may  well  be  left 
for  the  reader  to  peruse  for  himself.  Here,  how- 
ever, is  one  that  can  hardly  be  omitted,  as  it 
proves  at  once  Stella's  love  for  Sidney  and  the 
fine  nature  of  that  love: 

"Late  tyr'd  with  wo,  even  ready  for  to  pine 

With  rage  of  love,  I  cald  my  Love  unkind; 
She  in  whose  eyes  love,  though  unfelt,  doth  shine. 

Sweet  said,  that  I  true  love  in  her  should  find. 
I  joyed;  but  straight  thus  watred  was  my  wine: 

That  love  she  did,  but  loved  a  love  not  blind. 
Which  would  not  let  me,  whom  she  loved,  decline 

From  nobler  course,  fit  for  my  birth  and  mind : 
And  therefore,  by  her  love's  authority, 

[57] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 


"  Wild  Mie  these  tempests  of  vaiiie  love  to  flie, 
And  anchor  fast  my  seH'e  on  Vertue's  shore. 
Alas,  it"  tliis  the  only  mettall  he 
OF  love  new-c'oind  to  helpe  my  h<'((<jery, 

Deare,  love  me  not,  that  ye  may  love  me  more." 

This  is  followed  by  a  playful  sonnet 
which,  as  witli  many  of  the  poems  that 
tell  us  this  sad  old  story,  is  all  the  more 
appealingly  human  for  its  very  playful- 
ness. Stella  had  said  "No,  no!"  to  some 
loving  advance  of  Sidney's.  Accepting 
her  rebuff,  Sidney  reminds  her  of  the 
old  grammatical  rule  that  two  negatives 
make  an  affirmative: 

"...  For  late,  with  heart  most  hif]jh,  with  eyes 
most  low, 
I  erav'd  the  thinjif  which  ever  she  denies; 
She,  lightninir  love,  displaying  Venus'  skies, 
Least  once  should  not  be  heard,  twise  said.  No, 
No! 
Sing  then,  luy  IVIuse,  now  lo  P;ean  sing; 
Heav'ns  envy  not  at  my  high  triumphing, 
But  grammer's  force  with  sweet  successe  con- 
firme: 
For  granuner   sayes,  —  O   this,   deare   Stella, 

say,  — 
For  grammer  sayes,  —  to  grannuer  who  sayes 
nay  ?  — 
That  in  one  speech  two  negatives  afhrme!" 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  Gf  hady  Devereux 

The  reference  is  perhaps  t()  an  occasion 

still  more  poignantly  celebrated  in  one  of 

the  songs,  which  the  reader  may  care  to 

find  for  himself  —  with  the  refrain : 

"Take  me  to  thee,  and  thee  to  me: 
'No,  no,  no,  no,  my  Deare,  let  be.'  " 

It  is  evident  that  wlien  Sidney  deter- 
mined to  be  Penelope's  lover  in  earnest, 
he  was  impatient  with  half-measures,  and 
it  may  well  have  seemed  to  his  soldierly 
sense  of  action  that  such  a  husband  as 
Lord  Rich  was  a  man  to  fight,  and  if 
necessary  kill,  for  the  release  of  such  a 
wife.  But  Penelope,  though  later  in  life 
she  was  to  take  short  cuts  to  a  happiness 
perhaps  less  worthy  than  Sidney  offered 
her,  would  give  no  ear  to  his  desperate 
proposals.  Once,  we  read,  she  was  angry 
with  him  for  some  time  because,  having 
come  upon  her  while  she  dozed,  he  had 
stolen  a  kiss.  She  seems  to  have  for- 
given him  the  theft,  and  afterwards,  on 
rare  occasions,  to  have  saved  him  from 
being  again  a  thief  by  a  timely  gift.     But 

59 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
the  ardours  and  hopes  which  even  such  a  (guarded 
graciousness  aroused  in  Sidney  appear  to  have 
grown  too  perilous  for  her  conscience,  and  in  one 
of  the  sweetest  reproofs  in  poetry  —  a  reproof 
whose  very  tenderness  means  the  very  gift  that  is 
denied  —  she  begs  Sidney  to  desist:  for  her  and 
lionour's  sake.  I  quote  only  a  few  verses,  the 
artificial  pastoral  style  of  which  must  not  dis- 
guise for  the  reader  the  vital  significance  beneath : 

"In  a  grove  most  rich  of  shade, 
Where  birds  wanton  musicke  made, 
May,  then  yong,  his  pide  weedes  showing, 
New-perfumed  with  flowers  fresli  growing: 

"Astrophel  with  SteHa  sweete 
Did  for  mutual  comfort  meete. 
Both  within  themselves  oppressed. 
But  each  in  the  other  blessed. 

"Him  great  harmes  had  taught  much  care, 
Her  faire  necke  a  foule  yoke  bare; 
But  her  sight  his  cares  did  banish. 
In  his  sight  her  yoke  did  vanish." 

Astrophel  growing  too  eager  in  his  love,  Stella 
thus  admonishes  him: 

"Astrophel,  sayd  she,  my  love. 
Cease,  in  these  effects,  to  prove; 
Now  be  still,  yet  still  beleeve  me, 
Thy  griefe  more  than  death  would  grieve  me. 

[CO] 


<I0 


C<2 


Sir  Fhilip  Sid7iey  &  Lady  Devereux 

"If  that  any  tIiou<j^ht  in  me 
Can  tast  comfort  ])ut  of  thee, 
l>et  me,  fed  with  helHsh  an<i;uish, 
Joylesse,  hopelesse,  endlesse  lanj^uish  .  .  . 

*'If  to  secret  of  my  hart, 
I  do  any  wish  impart. 
Where  thou  art  not  foremost  placed, 
Be  both  wish  and  I  defaced. 

*'If  more  may  be  sayd,  I  say. 
All  my  blisse  in  thee  I  lay; 
If  thou  love,  my  love  content  thee. 
For  all  love,  all  faith  is  meant  thee. 

"Trust  me,  while  I  thee  deny. 
In  my  selfe  the  smart  I  try; 
Tyran  honour  doth  thus  use  thee, 
Stella's  selfe  might  not  refuse  thee 

"Therefore,  deere,  this  no  more  move, 
Least,  though  I  leave  not  thy  love, 
Which  too  deep  in  me  is  framed, 
I  should  blush  when  thou  are  named." 

Did  a  loving  woman  ever  deny  her  lover  in 
words  of  more  heavenly  tenderness  and  purity, 
and  did  ever  a  lover  interpret  such  a  denial  with 
so  fine  a  touch  ?  The  whole  poem  seems  to  have 
a  prophetic  accent  of  Lovelace's  famous  cry  a 
hundred  years  later: 

"I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more." 

[61] 


Old  Love  Sto?ics  Retold 

But,  mirror  of  cliivtilry  and  soul  of 
lionour  as  Sidney  was,  it  seems  to  have 
taken  him  some  time  to  accept  the  lesson 
Stella  thus  taught;  and,  indeed,  it  might 
well  seem  that  the  true  honour  was  on  the 
side  of  his  honourable  love  rather  than  on 
the  side  of  a  dishonourable  marriage. 
Indeed,  when  at  last  we  find  him  bidding 
liis  noble  farewell  to  the  love  that  was 
the  very  life  of  his  pure  heart,  the  terms 
of  his  farewell  do  not  indicate  that  he 
abandoned  that  love  from  any  sense  of 
its  dishonour  in  that  worldly  sense  of 
which  Stella  had  reminded  him,  but  be- 
cause —  as  some  saint  might  abandon 
the  world  for  the  service  of  God,  or  as 
some  patriot  might  sacrifice  his  domestic 
ties  to  the  service  of  his  country  —  he 
had  determined  to  abandon  earthly  love 
altogether.  Stella  could  not,  would  not, 
be  his,  and  as  time  proved  her  deter- 
mination to  be  irrevocable,  Sidney,  in 
spite  of  all  his  ardent  worship  for  her, 
could  but  at  length  come  home  to  his 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Dcvorux 
own  soul,  and  realize  that  for  one  of  his 
soaring  spirit  and  aml)itious  mind  there 
was  other  employment  than  the  soul- 
sickness  of  a  disappointed  lover.  It  was, 
we  may  imagine,  with  some  such  realiza- 
tion of  his  duties  to  himself,  rather  than 
in  any  recognition  of  unworthiness  in  a 
love  that  can  never  have  seemed  other  than 
sacred  to  him,  that  he  wrote  this  sonnet,  in 
which  the  love  story  of  Astrophel  and 
Stella  is,  as  it  were,  carried  up  to  heaven 
with  strains  of  anjrelic  music: 


"Leave  me,  O  Love,  which  readiest  but  to  dust; 
And  thou,  ray  raind,  aspire  to  higher  things; 
Grow  rich  in  that  which  never  taketh  rust; 

What  ever  fades,  but  fading  pleasure  brings. 
Draw  in  thy  beames,  and  humble  all  thy  might 

To  that  sweet  yoke  where  lasting  freedomes  be; 
Which  breakes  the  clowdes,  and  opens  forth  the 
light. 
That  doth  both  shine,  and  give  us  sight  to  see. 
O  take  fast  hold;  let  that  light  be  thy  guide 

In  this  small  course  which  birth  drawes  out  to 
death, 
And  think  how  evill  becommeth  him  to  slide. 
Who  seeketh  heav'n,  and  comes   of  heav'nly 
breath. 
Then  farewell,  world;  thy  uttermost  I  see: 
Eternall  Love,  maintaine  thy  life  in  me." 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
That  Sidney,  indeed,  found  himself,  and  that 
he  devoted  the  few  remaining  years  of  liis  Hfe 
to  the  "great  cause  which  needs  both  use  and 
art,"  to  which  he  refers  in  the  last  sonnet  but  one, 
and  which,  if  at  the  moment  of  his  writing  it  had 
a  more  particular  meaning,  is  for  us  to-day  suffi- 
ciently particularized  as  the  service  of  his  country, 
is  well  enough  known  from  the  familiar  histories. 
It  was  probably  in  the  autumn  of  1581  that 
Astrophel  took  that  solemn  farewell  of  his  Stella. 
That  he  was  married  in  the  March  of  1583  to 
Frances,  daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Walsingham, 
does  not  seem  to  be  a  fact  of  any  special  signifi- 
cance to  our  story.  Disappointed  lovers  usually 
marry,  and  Sidney  was  now  once  more  a  dis- 
tinguished man  of  this  world,  who  might  neces- 
sarily wish  to  marry  for  many  reasons  —  none  of 
which  need  be  counted  forgetfulness  of  Stella. 
On  the  17th  of  October,  1586,  he  died,  as  all 
the  school-children  know,  from  a  wound  inflicted 
at  the  battle  of  Zutphen  on  September  22d  —  and 
even  in  his  own  day,  so  romantic  seemed  the 
death  of  such  a  man,  that,  although  he  was,  in  a 
sense,  only  a  private  gentleman  of  no  great  oflScial 


Sir  Philip  Sidney  &  Lady  Devereux 
importance,  he  was  buried  like  a  king  in  okl  St. 
Paul's.     The  court  wore  mourning  for  him,  and 
it  is  pleasant  to  read  that  Stella's  grief  was  naked 
and  unashamed. 

Poor  Stella!  Her  after-life  reads  like  a  curi- 
ous paradox.  In  spite  of  her  husband's  brutality, 
she  remained  his  faithful  wife  for  some  nine 
years  after  Sidney's  death.  But  about  this  time 
she  formed  an  attachment  for  Sir  Christopher 
Blount,  and  the  virtue  which  had  resisted  Sidney 
succumbed  to  him.  She  fled  with  her  lover  and 
lived  publicly  with  him  for  many  years,  finally 
being  divorced  from  Lord  Rich  and  sharing  with 
Blount  his  subsequent  honors  as  Earl  of  Devon- 
shire and  his  ultimate  disgrace.  One  may  be 
pardoned  for  wishing  for  Sidney's  sake  that  her 
virtue  had  withstood  to  the  end.  Yet,  no  doubt, 
the  simple  answer  is  that  she  loved  Blount  better 
than  she  loved  Sidney.  If,  like  Astrophel,  you 
love  a  star,  you  must  be  content  to  see  it  shine. 
It  is  very  seldom  that  the  star  will  love  you  in 
return. 


[65  J 


e>^e>^e>^^i?^S.5i»^<>^;ai«^;5?^<5»^^S-^--5?=^^i'^^?^J^>=3J.^iS»^ 


IV 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 


THE  piteous  end  of  Shelley's  first 
wife,  Harriet  Westbrook,  has  nat- 
urally deflected  the  sympathy  of  the 
world  in  her  direction;  and  it  is,  of  course, 
well  that  we  should  give  ear  to  the  ])ka 
on  her  behalf  so  beautifully  made  l)y 
Mr.  William  Watson: 

"A  star  looked  down  from  heaven  and  loved  a 
flower 
Grown  in  earth's  garden  —  loved  it  for  an  hour; 
O  you  that  watch  his  orbit  in  the  spheres. 
Refuse  not  to  a  ruined  rosebud  tears." 

Yet  there  was  really  no  danger  of  the 

world   refusing   its   tears   to   that   ruined 

rosebud.     The    danger   has   rather   been 

that  in  giving  its  sympathy  to  Harriet  it 

has  somewhat  forgotten  that  Shelley  and 

Mary  had  a  claim  on  its  sympathy  too. 

and  really  a  more  serious  claim.     Stars 

have   their   rights   as   weW   as   rosebuds, 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 
and  if  Shelley's  marriage  with  Harriet 
was  a  tragic  mistake  for  Harriet,  it  was 
surely  no  less  tragic  a  mistake  for  Shelley. 
To  find  oneself  married  to  the  wrong 
woman  at  the  early  age  of  nineteen  is  a 
terrible  enough  mistake  to  begin  one's 
life  with  for  any  man.  For  a  nature  such 
as  Shelley's  it  was  a  spiritual  tragedy  of 
the  most  serious  kind. 

When,  at  last,  it  was  clearly  seen  that 
the  mistake  was  past  mending  —  and 
seen  the  more  clearly  by  Shelley,  because 
in  meeting  Mary  Godwin  he  felt,  and 
felt  rightly,  that  he  had  met  his  true  mate 
—  Shelley  saw  but  one  way  out,  and 
surely  there  was  no  other  way.  Life  with 
Harriet  had  become  impossible  for  both 
of  them.  That  they  had  made  a  school- 
boy and  schoolgirl  mistake  seemed  no 
reason  for  their  perpetuating  and  aggra- 
vating it.  Love  could  alone  justify  their 
continuing  together,  and  their  illusive 
love  was  dead. 

WaF  a  false  marriage  to  stand  in  the 

111  MP  ^'^  ■ 


67 


F 


^^ 


^ 


r  'o. 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
way  of  a  true  marriage  ?  Shelley  and  Mary  de- 
cided that  it  should  not,  and  though  the  world 
of  their  day  was  against  them,  time  has  been  on 
their  side.  Their  love  story  has  come  to  have  a 
value  for  humanity  at  large.  It  belongs  to  the 
important  world-series  of  First  Examples.  Many 
lovers,  indeed,  before  Shelley  and  ]Marv,  had 
taken  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  but  the  dif- 
ference between  their  stories  and  this  story  is 
that  they  have  rather  represented  lawlessness, 
whereas  Shelley  and  Mary  break  an  old  law  only 
to  make  a  new  and  better  law,  or,  at  least,  merely 
to  illustrate  its  necessity.  Shelley  and  Mary 
stand,  not  so  much  for  rebellious  passion,  as  for 
common  sense  in  the  regulation  of  the  difficult 
partnership  of  the  sexes.  They  represent  the 
right  of  human  beings  to  correct  their  matrimonial 
mistakes,  a  right  even  yet  stupidly  and  super- 
stitiously  denied.  Their  example  was  not,  as 
often  misrepresented,  in  favour  of  any  facile 
promiscuity.  Quite  the  reverse,  its  significance 
was  that  of  a  marriage  conceived  on  the  principles 
of  the  only  real  monogamy,  an  instinctive  monog- 
amy, based  on  natural  selection,  spiritual,  mental, 
[C8] 


Percy  Bysshc  Slielley 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwhi 
and  physical  —  a  spontaneous,  even  an  eager, 
monogamy,  and  not  merely  an  arbitrary  legal 
fiat.  Of  all  people,  Shelley  and  Mary  held  the 
doctrine  of  One  Man  for  One  Woman  —  only, 
they  insisted,  it  must  be  the  Right  Man  for  the 
Right  Woman. 

Shelley  first  became  acquainted  with  Harriet 
through  his  sister  Mary,  who  was  her  schoolmate 
at  Mrs.  Fenning's  genteel  academy  for  young 
ladies,  at  Church  House,  Clapham.  In  January, 
1811,  Shelley  had  called  at  the  schoolhouse  with 
a  letter  of  introduction  to  Harriet,  and  also  a 
present  to  her  from  Mary.  Harriet  was  then 
about  fifteen  and  a  half,  Shelley  about  eighteen 
and  a  half.  Harriet  was  sixteen  on  August  first, 
and  Shelley  nineteen  on  August  fourth.  Harriet 
appears  to  have  been  a  pretty,  attractive  girl,  of 
what  one  might  call  the  May  queen  type.  Good- 
natured,  bright  in  her  manner,  and  accomplished 
after  polite  boarding-school  standards,  she  was 
the  typical,  pretty,  popular  queen  of  the  school. 
Her  nature,  while  essentially  commonplace,  was 
sympathetically  open  to  the  influence  of  more 
definite  natures,  and  capable,  chameleon-like, 
[09] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
of  taking  its  colour  from  lier  intimates 
—  a  pleasing  but  dangerous  gift.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  one  John  Westhrook, 
a  retired  "  coffee-house  "  keeper  —  other- 
wise publican  —  a  man  so  Jewish  in 
appearance  as  to  be  nicknamed  "Jew 
Westl)rook."  Her  mother  counted  for 
nothing,  and  her  home  was  ruled  jointly 
by  her  father  and  a  forbidding  sister, 
Eliza  Westbrook,  a  narrow-minded, 
strong-willed  and  common-natured  wom- 
an, at  least  twice  her  age.  It  was, 
of  course,  well  known  at  Mrs.  Fenning's 
school  that  the  fantastic  yoinig  poet, 
who  occasionally  called  there  to  see  his 
sisters,  was  heir  to  a  baronetcy  and  six 
thousand  pounds  a  year.  Shelley,  very 
susceptible  —  and  pathetically  young  — 
was  quickly  attracted  by  Harriet's  en- 
gaging, popular  ways  and  her  pretty 
simulation  of  a  mind;  and  it  was  only 
human  nature  that  Eliza  Westbrook 
sliould  dream  of,  and  even  plan  for,  this 
possible  aristocratic  alliance  for  her  sister. 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 
Shelley  had  h).st  no  time  in  fiUino^  poor 
Harriet's  head  witli  his  very  youtliful 
rationalism  on  every  su})ject,  from  the- 
ology to  vegetarianism.  At  first,  Harriet 
had  been  horrified  to  hear  him  call  him- 
self an  "atheist"  —  one  of  his  favourite 
misrepresentations  of  himself.  If  ever 
there  was  a  mind  less  accurately  answer- 
ino-  to  all  that  the  word  "  atheist "  carries 
with  it,  it  was  Shelley's  —  but  Harriet 
became  accustomed  to  the  terrible  word 
before  long,  and  in  a  few  weeks  began 
really  to  think  that  she  thought  the  same 
as  Shelley.  She  had,  at  all  events,  super- 
ficially assimilated  his  views  sufficiently 
to  suffer  some  persecution  for  them  at 
school,  and,  it  was  said,  in  her  own  home. 
This  "persecution"  was  all  that  was 
needed  to  make  Shelley  conceive  himself 
her  champion  and  protector,  and  it  was  a 
boyish  chivalry,  as  noble  as  it  was  unwise, 
rather  than  the  impulse  of  love,  that 
prompted  Shelley  to  take  the  false  step  of 
marryingHarriet. 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Long  })efore  Shelley  had  met  Mary,  life  with 
Harriet  had  become  impossible  for  him,  and  even 
if  Mary  had  not  entered  into  the  story,  it  is  highly 
improbable  that  Shelley  and  Harriet  could  have 
continued  to  live  together.  It  must  be  added, 
too,  that  before  he  finally  parted  from  her,  Shelley 
firmly  believed,  rightly  or  wrongly,  that  Harriet 
had  been  unfaithful  to  him;  also  that  he  was 
scrupulously  careful  to  make  proper  provision 
for  her  after  their  separation;  that  he  believed, 
too,  that  she  desired  the  separation  no  less  than 
himself;  and  finally,  that  Harriet's  suicide  was 
not  the  direct  result  of  Shelley's  leaving  her,  but 
the  result  of  her  desertion  by  a  subsequent  lover. 
Shelley  had  been  married  to  Harriet  on  August 
28,  1811  —  "the  united  ages  of  bride  and  bride- 
groom," as  has  been  said,  *' making  thirty-five." 
It  was  in  May  or  June  of  1814  that  he  first  saw 
Mary,  when  already  the  distress  and  disappoint- 
ment of  his  marriage  were  weighing  heavily  on 
his  heart  and  mind.  The  daughter  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  and  William  Godwin,  brought 
up  in  an  atmosphere  of  intellectual  freedom,  and, 
indeed,  so  to  say,  heiress  to  a  revolutionary  tra- 
[72] 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godw'm 
dition,  was  naturally  predisposed  toward  the  sad 
young  rebel,  who  not  only  looked  up  to  her  father 
as  his  master,  but  was  giving  such  unselfish  proof 
of  his  reverence  by  that  generous  financial  assist- 
ance which  Godwin  was  never  ashamed  to  seek 
—  even  when,  with  preposterous  moral  loftiness, 
he  was  ostentatiously  disapproving  of  Shelley's 
love  for  his  daughter.  It  was  during  one  of 
Shelley's  calls  on  Godwin,  for  the  purpose  of  thus 
assisting  him,  that  he  saw  Mary  for  the  first  time. 
She  was  in  her  seventeenth  year,  and  is  thus  de- 
scribed by  Professor  Dowden:  "Shapely,  golden 
head,  a  face  very  pale  and  pure,  great  forehead, 
earnest  hazel  eyes,  and  an  expression  at  once  of 
sensibility  and  firmness  about  her  delicately 
curved  lips."  Her  nature  was  more  conserva- 
tive than  that  of  either  her  father  or  her  mother, 
which  made  her  all  the  more  suitable  as  a  wife 
for  Shelley,  with  his  inflammable  idealism  and 
headlong  experimentalism.  She  seems,  too,  to 
have  combined  a  firm  mental  balance  with  powers 
of  strong  feeling  which  were  deep,  but  not  de- 
monstrative, and  Hogg,  a  shrewd  observer,  was 
struck  by  the  impressive  quietness  of  her  manner. 
[73] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Here  is  an  extract  from  his  account  of  a 
call  which  he  and  Shelley  made  at  God- 
win's house,  in  Skinner  Street,  on  June  8, 
1814.  Godwin  was  out,  and  while  they 
awaited  his  return,  Shelley  impatiently 
paced  up  and  down  the  room.  *'  He 
appeared  to  be  displeased,"  writes  Hogg, 
in  his  ironical  manner,  "  at  not  finding 
the  fountain  of  Political  Justice.  '  Where 
is  Godwin  ? '  he  asked  me  several  times, 
as  if  I  knew.  I  did  not  know ,  and,  to 
say  the  truth,  I  did  not  care.  He  con- 
tinued his  uneasy  promenade;  and  I 
stood  reading  the  names  of  old  English 
authors  on  the  backs  of  the  venerable 
volumes,  when  the  door  was  partially 
and  softly  opened.  A  thrilling  voice 
called :  '  Shelley ! '  A  thrilling  voice  an- 
swered: 'Mary!'  And  he  darted  out  of 
the  room,  like  an  arrow  from  the  bow  of 
the  far-shooting  king.  A  very  young 
female,  fair  and  fair-haired,  pale  indeed, 
and  with  a  piercing  look,  wearing  a  frock 
of  tartan,  an  unusual  dress  in  London  at 


w 


74 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 
that  time,  had  called  him  out  of  the  room. 
He  was  absent  a  very  short  time  —  a 
minute  or  two ;  and  then  returned.  '  God- 
win is  out;  there  is  no  use  in  waiting.' 
So  we  continued  our  walk  along  Holborn. 
*  Who  was  that,  pray  .^ '  I  asked; '  a  daugh- 
ter.^' 'Yes.'  *iV  daughter  of  Wilham 
Godwin  } '  '  The  daughter  of  Godwin 
and  Mary.'  This  was  the  first  time  .  .  . 
that  I  beheld  a  very  distinguished  lady,  of 
whom  I  have  much  to  say  hereafter.  It 
was  but  the  glance  of  a  moment,  through 
a  door  partly  opened.  Her  quietness  cer- 
tainly struck  me,  and  possibly  also,  for  I 
am  not  quite  sure  on  that  point,  her  pale, 
piercing  look." 

Before  the  end  of  June,   Shelley  was 
writing  verses  to  her  like  these: 

"  Mine  eyes  were  dim  with  tears  unshed; 
Yes,  I  was  firm  —  thus  wert  not  thou; 
My  baffled  looks  did  fear  yet  dread 

To  meet  thy  looks  —  I  could  not  know 
How  anxiously  they  sought  to  shine 
With  soothing  pity  upon  mine. 

"  To  sit  and  curb  the  soul's  mute  rage 
Which  preys  upon  itself  alone; 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

•'  To  curse  the  life  which  is  the  cage 

Of  fettered  tijrief  that  dares  not  groan. 
Hiding  from  many  a  careless  eye 
The  scorned  load  of  agony. 

"  Upon  my  heart  thy  accents  sweet, 

Of  peace  and  pity,  fell  like  dew 
On  flowers  half  dead;  —  thy  lips  did  meet 

Mine  tremblingly;  thy  dark  eyes  threw 
Thy  soft  persuasion  on  my  brain, 
Charming  away  its  dream  of  pain. 

"We  are  not  happy!  sweet;  our  state 

Is  strange  and  full  of  d()ul)t  and  fear; 
More  need  of  words  that  ills  abate; 
Reserve  or  censure  come  not  near 
Our  sacred  friendship,  lest  there  be 
No  solace  left  for  thee  and  me." 

Mary  was  devoted  to  the  memory  of  her  mother 
whom  she  had  never  seen,  as  she  had  died  when 
Mary  was  born.  Her  step-mother,  the  second 
Mrs.  Godwin,  was  not  sympathetic  to  her,  and 
one  of  Mary's  favourite  haunts  was  her  mother's 
grave  in  St.  Pancras  churchyard,  then  situated 
among  green  fields,  and  not  as  now  in  the  lap  of 
raihvay  termini.  She  would  often  sit  there,  read- 
ing and  enjoying  that  solitude  which  is  so  hard 
to  get  among  the  living;  and  it  is  not  improbable 
that  Shelley  was  aware  of  her  solitude.  And, 
sentiment  apart,  could  there  have  been  a  more 
[70] 


o 


Shelley  mid  Mary  Goikchi 
appropriate  altar  for  their  love  than  the  tomb  of 
the  brave  woman  who  liad  courage  when  such 
unconventional  courage  as  Mary  Wollstonecraft's 
really  meant  something,  not  as  now,  when  it  is 
not  only  a  drug  in  the  market,  but  a  hackneyed 
feminine  device  ? 

To  the  dispassionate  onlooker  Mary  Godwin 
may  lack  certain  qualities  which  are  popularly 
supposed  to  inspire  great  passions  in  men.  There 
was  a  certain  primness  about  her.  She  had  been 
begotten,  so  to  say,  on  revolutionary  principles, 
and  there  was  the  taint  of  propaganda  about  her. 
Still  Shelley,  assuredly,  had  no  distaste  for  prop- 
aganda, and  Mary  was  a  woman  too. 

Any  one  capable  of  comprehending  the  situa- 
tion can  well  understand,  and  sympathize  in, 
the  joy  Shelley  must  have  felt  at  meeting,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  the  positive  —  not  merely 
the  placidly  corroborative  —  feminine  of  himself. 
Harriet  had  been  the  prettiest  of  mental  parrots. 
But  Shelley  —  who,  for  all  his  idealism,  was  no 
fool  —  knew  that  he  had  made  her,  knew  that 
she  was  to  him  merely  a  ventriloquist's  dummy 
of  the  mind.  To  meet  a  woman  who  could  really 
[77] 


1 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
talk  l)ack  to  him,  a  woman  who  had  not 
learnt  all  from  him,  a  woman  whose 
mind  was  no  mere  feminine  clay  in  the 
hands  of  the  masculine  potter,  and  a 
woman,  too,  who  w^as  also  —  a  woman, 
gifted  with  charm  and  mystery  and 
motherhood!  Surely  Shelley,  of  all  men, 
merited  the  true  wife  of  himself.  It  was 
as  absurd  as  it  was  unhappy  that  he 
should  have  mated  with  a  plump,  little, 
rose-pink  schoolgirl  like  Harriet.  And 
oh,  the  wonderful  refreshment  and  stimu- 
lus of  Mary! 

A  copy  of  "  Queen  Mab "  is  in  exist- 
ence, given  by  Shelley  to  Mary,  thus  in- 
scribed: "Mary  Wollstonecraft  Godwin, 
P.  B.  S.  .  .  .  You  see,  Mary,  I  have  not 
forgotten  you."  On  a  fly-leaf,  at  the 
end  of  the  volume,  is  this  impassioned 
avowal,  in  Mary's  handwriting,  dated 
July,  1814:  "This  book  is  sacred  to  me, 
and  as  no  other  creature  shall  ever  look 
into  it,  I  may  write  in  it  what  I  please  — 
yet,    what   shall    I   write  —  that   I    love 


Shelley  and  Ma?j  Godwin 
the  author  beyond  all  powers  of  expres- 
sion, and  that  I  am  parted  from  him, 
dearest  and  only  love.  By  that  love  we 
have  promised  to  each  other,  although 
I  may  not  be  yours,  I  can  never  be  an- 
other's. But  I  am  thine,  exclusively 
thine. 

"'By  the  kiss  of  love,  the  glance  none  saw  beside. 
The  smile  none  else  might  understand, 
The  whispered  thought  of  hearts  allied. 
The  pressure  of  the  thrilling  hand,' 

I  have  pledged  myself  to  thee,  and  sacred 

is  the  gift.     I  remember  your  words  — • 

'  You  are  now,  Mary,  going  to  mix  with 

many,  and,  for  a  moment,  I  shall  depart, 

but  in  the  solitude  of  your  chamber  I 

shall  be  with  you '  —  yes,  you  are  ever 

with  me,  sacred  vision  — 

" '  But  ah !  I  feel  in  this  was  given 
A  blessing  never  meant  for  me; 
Thou  art  too  like  a  dream  from  heaven 
For  earthly  love  to  merit  thee.'" 

Very    soon    Shelley    was    definitely   to 

admit  that  there  was  no  life  for  him  apart 

from  Mary.     Harriet  was  out  of  London 

in  July,  and  on  July  14  Shelley  wrote,  beg- 


""^ 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
ging  lier  to  come  to  town.  When  she  came,  he 
opened  his  mind  and  lieart  to  her.  Their  mar- 
riage was  a  failure,  and  he  suggested  that  they 
should  part,  though  he  would,  of  course,  con- 
tinue to  provide  for  her,  and  saw  no  reason  why 
they  should  not  remain  true  and  affectionate 
friends  to  each  other.  Harriet,  who  was  ex- 
pecting her  second  child  in  December,  was  made 
quite  ill  by  the  disclosure,  and,  for  some  days, 
Shelley  was  distracted  between  tenderness  and 
pity  for  her,  and  his  love  for  Mary.  Harriet, 
woman-like,  threw  all  the  blame  on  Mary,  though 
we  know  that  Mary  was  in  no  way  the  initial 
cause  of  Shelley's  separation  from  Harriet,  a 
separation  to  which  it  would  seem  Harriet  had 
not  explicitly  agreed,  though  she  may  have  ac- 
cepted it  as  the  inevitable.  The  presence  of  her 
sister  at  her  sick  bedside  would  not  help  to  mend 
matters,  and,  therefore,  by  July  27,  1814,  Shelley 
and  Mary  had  decided  that  they  must  act  coura- 
geously, according  to  their  own  sense  of  right. 
Between  four  and  five  o'clock  on  the  morning  of 
July  28,  1814,  Mary  and  Shelley  —  accompanied 
by  Jane  Clairmont,  the  second  Mrs.  Godwin's 
[80] 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 
daughter,  by  a  former  marriage  —  were  starting 
for  Dover,  on  their  way  to  the  Continent.  Mary 
and  Jane  Chiirmont  left  the  house  as  if  for  a 
morning  walk,  and  met  Shelley  at  the  corner  of 
Hatton  Garden,  William  Godwin  having  no 
suspicion  of  what  was  afoot. 

Shelley's  account  of  their  flight  in  his  journal 
still  beats  like  a  heart  with  the  breathless  excite- 
ment, the  tremulous  joy  and  fear,  of  the  occasion. 
Here  are  one  or  two  extracts: 

"  July  28  —  The  night  preceding  this  morning, 
all  being  decided,  I  ordered  a  chaise  to  be  ready 
by  four  o'clock.  I  watched  until  the  lightning 
and  the  stars  became  pale.  At  length  it  was 
four.  I  believed  it  not  possible  that  we  should 
succeed;  still  there  appeared  to  lurk  some  danger 
even  in  certainty.  I  went;  I  saw  her;  she  came 
to  me.  Yet  one  quarter  of  an  hour  remained. 
Still  some  arrangement  must  be  made,  and  she 
left  me  for  a  short  time.  How  dreadful  did  this 
time  appear;  it  seemed  that  we  trifled  with  life 
and  hope;  a  few  minutes  passed;  she  was  in  my 
arms  —  we  were  safe ;  we  were  on  our  road  to 
Dover.  .  .  . 

[81] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
*'  At  Dartford  we  took  four  horses,  that 
we  might  outstrip  pursuit.  We  arrived 
at  Dover  before  four  o'clock.  Some 
time  was  necessarily  expended  in  con- 
sideration —  in  dinner  —  in  bargaining 
with  sailors  and  custom-house  officers. 
At  length  we  engaged  a  small  boat  to 
convey  us  to  Calais;  it  was  ready  by  six 
o'clock.  The  evening  was  most  beauti- 
ful; the  sands  slowly  receded;  we  felt 
safe.  ..." 

They  had  a  stormy  and  even  dangerous 
passage.     Shelley  continues: 

"Mary  did  not  know  our  danger;  she 
Avas  resting,  between  my  knees,  that 
were  unable  to  support  her;  she  did  not 
speak  or  look,  but  I  felt  that  she  was 
there.  .  .  .  The  morning  broke,  the  light- 
ning died  away,  the  violence  of  the  wind 
abated.  We  arrived  at  Calais,  whilst 
Mary  still  slept;  we  drove  upon  the 
sands.  Suddenly,  the  broad  sun  rose 
over  France. 

"Friday,    July    29  —  1    said,    'Mary, 


Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 

look;   the    sun    rises   over   Fninee.'     We 
walked  over  the  sands  to  the  inn.   .  .  ." 

*'  ^lary,  look ;  the  sun  rises  over  France." 
How  full  of  hope  and  the  exaltation  of 
the  new  great  life,  at  last  really  begun, 
are  the  words !  Nor  was  the  future  to  dis- 
appoint the  hopes  of  that  happy  dawn. 
Shelley  and  Mary  had  lived  side  by  side 
for  nearly  eight  years,  when,  on  July  8, 
1822,  death  so  cruelly  separated  them, 
and  though,  indeed,  their  married  life 
was  not  without  some  passing  shadows 
such  as  must  occasionally  darken  even  the 
closest  and  happiest  union  of  two  natures 
each  so  strongly  individual,  there  never 
seems  to  have  been  a  doubt  in  either 
heart  that  they  were  each  other's  true  and 
final  mate,  and  that  they  had  done  what 
life  meant  them  to  do  in  taking  each  other 
in  defiance  of  the  common  usages  of  the 
world.  Mary,  indeed,  is  clearly  seen  to 
have  been  the  ideal  wife  for  Shelley,  par- 
ticularly in  the  wisdom  Avith  which  she 
took  the  occasional  —  purely  Platonic  — 


■\ 


^. 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
passions  for  other  women  to  which  his  poet's 
sensibihty  made  him  hable.  Possibly  his  very 
enraptured  feehng  for  the  Countess  Emiha 
Viviani  made  the  greatest  demands  on  Mary's 
powers  of  "understanding"  him,  but  Mary  loved 
his  work  too  well  to  be  jealous  of  a  feeling  that 
had  inspired,  perhaps,  the  loftiest  love  poem  in 
English  —  "Epipsychidion."  She  knew  of  what 
a  poet's  heart  is  made,  how  passionately  sensitive 
to  beauty,  how  subject  to  passing  emotional  pos- 
sessions, and  she  knew  that  only  so  could  a  poet 
create  for  us  his  beautiful  dreams.  It  was  for  a 
poet's  wife  to  understand  a  poet's  nature,  and 
Mary  understood.  She  knew  that  whatever 
light  of  beauty  should  attract  his  eyes  for  a 
moment,  she  was,  as  he  had  called  her  in  the 
beautiful  dedication  to  "The  Revolt  of  Islam," 
—  his  "  own  heart's  home  " : 

"So  now  my  summer  task  is  ended,  ^lary, 
And  I  return  to  thee,  mine  own  heart's  home; 
As  to  his  Queen  some  victor  Knight  of  Faery, 
Earning  bright  spoils  for  her  enchanted  dome.  ..." 


[84 


V 


John  Keats  and  Fanny  Brawne 

IT  is  surprising  that  the  love  stories  of  great 
poets  should  so  often  disappoint  the  romantic 
—  and,  one  may  add,  the  aesthetic  —  sense. 
From  such  lovers  of  love,  and  such  passionists 
of  beauty,  one  naturally  expects  not  only  the 
ideal  passion,  but  the  ideal  object.  Of  all  poets 
one  would  say  this  of  John  Keats,  the  one  poet 
whose  name  has  come  to  be  synonymous  with 
beauty;  and  it  is  certainly  a  particularly  ironical 
paradox  that  the  lady  irritatingly  associated  with 
his  name  should  be  the  least  congruous  of  all 
the  many  commonplace  women  transfigured  by 
the  genius  they  could  not  understand,  and  the 
love  of  which  they  were  not  worthy.  Most 
women  honoured  by  the  love  of  great  poets  have 
at  least  been  inoffensive,  placidly  pretty,  domesti- 
cally devoted.  They  have  been  that,  or  they 
have  been  —  devils.  To  both  statements,  there 
[85] 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
are,  of  course,  exceptions.  Generally 
speaking,  they  have  been  neither  beauti- 
ful nor  intelligent.  The  poor  poet,  of 
course,  thought  they  were  both,  —  })e- 
causc  he  was  a  poet.  A  poet  would 
hardly  be  a  poet  if  he  did  not  make  such 
divinely  absurd  mistakes,  and  one  might 
almost  state  it  as  the  first  necessity  of 
his  being  a  poet  at  all  that  he  should 
make  that  grand  mistake  about  the 
woman  he  loves.  In  this  respect,  the 
English  poets  have  been  particularly 
fortunate.  Beatrice  and  Laura  were  in- 
deed graceful  nonentities,  but  there  is 
something  dainty  and  distinguished  about 
their  names  that  allows  us  to  think  of 
them  without  impatience  as  decorative 
and  docile  adjectives  to  the  great  names 
with  which  they  are  pathetically  linked. 
One  could  mention  no  few  poets  of  other 
nations  who  have  succeeded  in  giving 
the  names  of  the  women  they  loved  a 
significance  hardly  second  to  their  own. 
But  with  such  exceptions  as,  say  Shelley 

86 


yohn  Keats  and  Fanny  Brawne 
and  Browning,  Rossetti  and  William 
Morris,  the  English  poets  have  proved 
singularly  unable  to  sing  their  loves  up 
among  the  stars.  Of  course,  there  is  — 
Ann  Hathaway.  And  there  is  also  — 
Fanny  Brawne. 

Probably  the  reason  of  this  is  that  most 
English  poets  have  sprung  from  the 
middle  classes,  were  born  in  the  provinces, 
or  lived  in  the  suburbs.  Beautiful  women 
are  born  either  among  the  very  rich  or 
the  very  poor.  The  English  poet,  as  a 
rule,  has  been  born  between  these  ex- 
tremes, and  his  lines  have  fallen  neither  in 
Mayfair  nor  Whitechapel  —  but  in  Clap- 
ham.  He  has  come  in  contact  neither 
with  the  noble  lady,  nor  the  beautiful 
peasant.  His  German-silver  fate  has  been 
the  water-colour  miss  of  the  academies 
for  young  ladies.  Shelley  met  such  a 
fate  in  silly  little  Harriet  Westbrook,  and 
Keats  met  another  in  the  still  sillier  Fanny 
Brawne. 

Fame,  that  loves  to  humour  its  poets, 

87 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
has  consented  to  glorify  the  names  of  many  un- 
important poor  relations  of  genius,  hut  there  has 
never  been  a  more  insignificant  name  upon  its 
lips  than  the  name  of  Fanny  Brawne.  But  John 
Keats  loved  a  suburban  miss  of  that  name  —  and, 
perforce,  Time,  and  perhaps  even  Eternity,  must 
do  her  honour.  One  writes  so,  remembering  not 
only  the  tortures  to  which  she  subjected  a  noble 
spirit  with  her  dancing-class  coquetries,  but  re- 
membering too  this  passage  in  Sir  Charles  Dilke's 
Memoirs  of  his  grandfather: 

"Keats  died  admired  only  by  his  personal 
friends,  and  by  Shelley;  and  even  ten  years  after 
his  death,  when  the  first  memoir  was  proposed, 
the  woman  he  had  loved  had  so  little  belief  in  his 
poetic  reputation,  that  she  wrote  to  Mr.  Dilke, 
*  The  kindest  act  would  be  to  let  him  rest  for  ever 
in  the  obscurity  to  which  circumstances  have 
condemned  him.' " 

Ten  years  after  his  death  the  woman  whom 
Endymion  loved  was  still  unable,  not  only  to 
appreciate  "  the  ode  to  a  Grecian  urn,"  but  the 
immortal  honour  he  had  done  her.  Such  an 
utterance  makes  one  wish  that  Keats  had  lived 
[88] 


"yohn  Keats  and  Fa?i?iy  Brawne 
a  year  or  two  longer,  not  for  the  sake  of  his  work 
—  for  he  could  have  reached  no  higher  perfec- 
tion —  but  to  recover  from  an  absurd  infatuation, 
which  began  in  calf-love  and  grew  hysterical 
with  the  advance  of  inherited  consumption. 
That  Keats  would  have  recovered  from  his 
suburban  passion,  and  passed  on  to  some  higher 
and  completer  love,  his  letters  to  Fanny  Brawne 
herself  sufficiently  prove.  So  long  as  he  was 
comparatively  well  and  occupied  with  poetry  he 
absented  himself  from  the  felicity  of  her  presence 
with  a  prosaic  deliberation  which  must  have 
seemed  strangely  unloverlike  to  "  La  Belle  Dame 
Sans  Merci."  It  was  only  when  illness  gave  a 
neurotic  intensity  to  all  his  feelings  that  Fanny 
Brawne  gained  a  painful  importance.  The  sick 
have  many  fancies.  When  Keats  was  himself, 
before  that  drop  of  arterial  blood  upon  the  sheet, 
which  told  the  surgical-student  poet  that  he  must 
die,  he  wrote  like  this  to  his  happily  married 
brother  George:  "Notwithstanding  your  happi- 
ness and  your  recommendations,  I  hope  I  shall 
never  marry:  though  the  most  beautiful  creature 
were  waiting  for  me  at  the  end  of  a  journey  or  a 
[89] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
walk;  though  the  carpet  were  of  silk, 
and  the  curtains  of  the  morning  clouds, 
the  chairs  and  sofas  stuffed  with  cygnet's 
down,  the  food  manna,  the  wine  beyond 
claret,  the  window  opening  on  Winander- 
mere,  I  should  not  feel,  or  rather  my 
happiness  should  not  be,  so  fine;  my 
solitude  is  sublime  —  for,  instead  of 
what  I  have  described,  there  is  a  sub- 
limity to  welcome  me  home;  the  roaring 
of  the  wind  is  my  wife;  and  the  stars 
through  my  window-panes  are  my  chil- 
dren; the  mighty  abstract  Idea  of  Beauty 
in  all  things,  I  have,  stifles  the  more 
divided  and  minute  domestic  happiness. 
An  amiable  wife  and  sweet  children  I 
contemplate  as  part  of  that  Beauty,  but 
I  must  have  a  thousand  of  those  beauti- 
ful particles  to  fill  up  my  heart.  .  .  . 
Those  things,  combined  with  the  opin- 
ion I  have  formed  of  the  generality 
of  women,  who  appear  to  me  as 
children  to  whom  I  would  rather 
give    a    sugar-plum    than  my  time,  form 

90 


'John  Keats  and  Fa? my  Brawne 
a    barrier    against    matrimony   wliicli   I 
rejoice  in.   ..." 

Yet  before  this  he  had  met  a  beautiful 
girl  whom  history  would  fain  substitute 
for  Fanny  Brawne,  and  for  whom  awhile 
she  was  mistaken,  a  beautiful  girl  whom 
he  thus  vividly  descTi])es:  "She  is  not  a 
Cleopatra,  but  is,  at  least,  a  Charmian: 
she  has  a  rich  Eastern  look;  she  has  fine 
eyes,  and  fine  manners.  When  she  comes 
into  a  room  she  makes  the  same  impres- 
sion as  the  beauty  of  a  leopardess.  She  is 
too  fine  and  too  conscious  of  herself  to  re- 
pulse any  man  who  may  address  her:  from 
habit  she  thinks  that  nothing  particular. 
I  always  find  myself  more  at  ease  with 
such  a  woman:  the  picture  before  me  al- 
ways gives  me  a  life  and  animation  which 
I  cannot  possibly  feel  with  anything  in- 
ferior. I  am,  at  such  times,  too  much 
occupied  in  admiring  to  be  awkward  or 
in  a  tremble :  I  forget  myself  entirely,  be- 
cause I  live  in  her.  You  will,  by  this 
time,  think  I  am  in  love  with  her,  so,  be- 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
fore  I  go  any  further,  I  will  tell  you  I  am  not.  She 
kept  me  awake  one  night,  as  a  tune  of  Mozart's 
might  do.  I  speak  of  the  thing  as  a  pastime  and  an 
amusement,  than  which  I  can  feel  none  deeper  than 
a  conversation  with  an  imperial  woman,  the  very 
*  yes '  and  '  no '  of  whose  life  is  to  me  a  banquet.  I 
don't  cry  to  take  the  moon  home  with  me  in  my 
pocket,  nor  do  I  fret  to  leave  her  behind  me.  I 
like  her,  and  her  like,  because  one  has  no  sensa- 
tions: what  we  both  are  is  taken  for  granted." 

Critics  for  some  time  mistook  this  for  a  de- 
scription of  Fanny  Brawne,  but  it  has  since  trans- 
pired that  Keats  was  here  describing  a  Miss 
Charlotte  (or,  according  to  Rossetti,  Jane)  Coxe. 

His  first  impression  —  or  inventory  —  of  Miss 
Brawne  was,  indeed,  by  no  means  so  compli- 
mentary. 

"  Shall  I  give  you  Miss ?     She  is  about  my 

height,  with  a  fine  style  of  countenance  of  the 
lengthened  sort;  she  wants  sentiment  in  every 
feature;  she  manages  to  make  her  hair  look  well; 
her  nostrils  are  very  fine,  though  a  little  painful; 
her  mouth  is  bad  and  good;  her  profile  is  better 
than  her  full  face,  which,  indeed,  is  not  full,  but 
[92] 


John  Keats 


yohn  Keats  and  Fanny  Braivne 

pale  and  tliin,  without  showing  any  hone;  Iier 
shape  is  very  graceful,  and  so  are  her  movements; 
her  arms  are  good,  her  hands  bad-ish,  her  feet 
tolerable.  She  is  not  seventeen,  but  she  is  igno- 
rant; monstrous  in  her  behaviour,  flying  out  in 
all  directions,  calling  people  such  names  that  I 
was  forced  lately  to  make  use  of  the  term  — 
Minx:  this  is,  I  think,  from  no  innate  vice,  but 
from  a  penchant  she  has  for  acting  stylishly.  I 
am,  however,  tired  of  such  style,  and  shall  de- 
cline any  more  of  it.  She  had  a  friend  to  visit 
her  lately ;  you  have  known  plenty  such  —  she 
plays  the  music,  but  without  one  sensation  but 
the  feel  of  the  ivory  at  her  fingers;  she  is  a  down- 
right Miss,  without  one  set-off.  We  hated  her, 
and  smoked  her,  and  baited  her,  and,  I  think, 

drove  her  away.     Miss thinks  her  a  paragon 

of  fashion,  and  says  she  is  the  only  woman  in  the 
world  she  would  change  persons  with.  What  a 
shape,  —  she  is  as  superior  as  a  rose  to  a  dande- 
lion." 

This    verbal    description    tallies,    almost    wath 
exactness,  with  the  only  extant  portrait    of  Miss 
Brawne,  a  silhouette  by  M.  Edouart,  which  Mr. 
[93] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Sidney  Colvin  thus  convincingly  puts  into 
words :  "  A  brisk  and  blooming,  very 
young  beauty,  of  the  far  from  uncommon 
English-hawk  blonde  type,  with  aquiline 
nose  and  retreating  forehead,  sharp-cut 
nostril  and  gray-blue  eye,  a  slight,  shapely 
figure  rather  short  than  tall,  a  taking 
smile  and  good  hair,  carriage  and  com- 
plexion." 

It  is  rather  a  pity  that  Miss  Brawne's 
letters  have  not  been  preserved,  though 
it  would  not  be  difficult,  I  think,  to 
imagine  them.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
be  Keats  to  have  received  such  colourless 
young-lady-like  scrawls  —  which,  poor 
fellow,  he,  doubtless,  kissed  and  treas- 
ured, "even  as  you  and  I."  Yet,  it  must 
not  be  thought  that  Miss  Brawne  was 
without  character  or  parts.  On  the 
contrary,  she  seems,  from  Mr.  Buxton 
Forman's  naive  description,  to  have  been 
something  like  a  virago  of  the  accom- 
plishments. "She  had  the  gift  of  in- 
dependence or  self-sufficingness  in  a  high 


'^ohn  Keats  and  Fanny  Brawne 
degree,  "  says  the  good  Mr.  Forman,  "  and 
it  was  not  easy  to  turn  her  from  a  settled 
purpose.  Without  being  in  general  a  sys- 
tematic student,  she  was  a  voluminous 
reader  in  widely  varying  branches  of  lit- 
erature; and  some  out-of-the-way  sub- 
jects she  followed  up  with  great  perse- 
verance. One  of  her  strong  points  of 
learning  was  the  history  of  costume,  in 
which  she  was  so  well  read  as  to  be  able 
to  answer  any  question  of  detail  at  a 
moment's  notice.  .  .  .  She  was  an  eager 
politician,  with  very  strong  convictions, 
fiery  and  animated  in  discussion;  a 
characteristic  she  preserved  till  the  end." 

Whatever  else  Fanny  Brawne  lacked, 
Mr.  Forman  wishes  us  to  remember  that 
"  one  of  her  strong  points  of  learning  was 
the  history  of  costume,  etc.  .  .  ."  —  also 
that  "  she  was  an  eager  politician.  ..." 

O  weep  for  Adonais ! 

Mr.  Forman  is  nothing  if  not  gallant  — 
but  now  it  is  perhaps  time  to  remember 
that  John  Keats  loved  this  Fanny  Brawne. 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

He  loved  her  —  yes !  —  and  yet ! 

Yes!  In  his  seeond  letter  [10  July,  1810]  he 
writes :  "  I  never  knew  before,  what  such  a  love 
as  you  have  made  me  feel,  was;  I  did  not  believe 
in  it;  my  Fanny  was  afraid  of  it,  lest  it  should 
burn  me  up." 

In  his  third  letter  [27  July,  1819]  he 
writes :  "  You  absorb  me  in  spite  of  myself  —  you 
alone:  for  I  look  not  forward  with  any  pleasure 
to  what  is  call'd  being  settled  in  the  world;  I 
tremble  at  domestic  cares  —  yet  for  you  I  would 
meet  them,  though  if  it  would  leave  you  the  hap- 
pier I  would  rather  die  than  do  so.  I  have  two 
luxuries  to  brood  over  in  my  walks,  your  Loveli- 
ness and  the  hour  of  my  death.  O  that  I  could 
have  possession  of  them  both  in  the  same  minute." 

In  the  fifth  letter,  dated  Winchester,  August 
16th,  however,  we  find  that  John  Keats  has  been 
at  Winchester  four  days,  and  yet  has  not  written 
to  his  lady.  With  almost  clumsy  frankness  — 
even  harshness,  as  he  admits  —  he  confesses  that 
poetry  has  got  hold  of  him,  with  so  imperious  a 
preoccupation  that  he  could  at  the  moment  no 
more  write  *'soothing  words"  to  Fanny  Brawne 
[06  1 


"JoJm  Keats  cnid  Fanny  Braw?ie 
tlian  if  ho  were  "engaged  in  a  charge  of  cavalry." 
Continually  afterwards  we  find  him  placing  his 
work  on  his  poems  before  her.  He  dare  not  see 
her  lest  she  should  distract  him  from  his  master- 
piece. And  later,  when  he  falls  ill,  we  find  him, 
for  a  lover,  curiously  cautious.  He  seems  indeed 
to  have  been  as  careful  of  his  health  as  of  his 
poetry;  for,  although  the  two  lovers  lived  next 
door  to  each  other  at  Hampstead,  Keats  w  as  so 
afraid  of  the  perturbation  of  his  lady's  presence, 
that  days  and  days  went  by  without  his  ventur- 
ing to  allow  her  to  pay  him  a  brief  call;  and  he 
seems  w  ell  content  to  have  her  written  "  Good- 
night," or  to  see  her  from  his  window.  The  only 
apparent  vitality  of  his  love  was  his  unreasonable 
jealousy  of  his  friend,  Charles  Browm;  which  was 
merely  a  sign  of  that  coming  neurosis  through 
whose  exaggeration  Fanny  Brawne  w^as  to  seem 
so  pathetically  more  important  than  she  really 
w^as,  or  ever  could  have  been,  had  he  not  been  so 
sick  a  man. 

That  Keats  thought  he  loved  Fanny  Brawne 
his  letters  to  others,  rather  than  his  official  love- 
letters    to    her,    vehemently,    even    hysterically, 
[97] 


w 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
prove.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he 
beUeved  he  was  dying  of  —  her!  To 
Charles  Brown  —  the  friend  of  whom 
he  had  been  jealous,  and  yet  to  whom 
he  wrote  his  last  letters  —  he  wrote  on 
November  1,  1820:  "As  I  have  gone  thus 
far  into  it,  I  must  go  on  a  little;  —  per- 
haps it  may  relieve  the  load  of  wretched- 
ness which  presses  upon  me.  The  per- 
suasion that  I  shall  see  her  no  more  will 
kill  me.  My  dear  Brown,  I  should  have 
had  her  when  I  was  in  health,  and  I 
should  have  remained  well.  I  can  bear 
to  die  —  I  cannot  bear  to  leave  her.  Oh, 
God !  God !  God !  Everything  that  I  have 
in  my  trunks  that  reminds  me  of  her  goes 
through  me  like  a  spear.  The  silk  lining 
she  put  in  my  travelling  cap  scalds  my 
head.  My  imagination  is  horribly  vivid 
about  her  —  I  see  her  —  I  hear  her. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  world  of  sufficient 
interest  to  divert  me  from  her  a  moment. 
.  .  .  O  that  I  could  be  buried  near  where 
she  lives !     I  am  afraid  to  write  to  her  — 


•3^aapiaa»*«| 


"John  Keats  and  Fa?i?iy  Braic/ie 
to  receive  a  letter  from  her  —  to  see  her 
handwriting  would  hreak  my  heart  — 
even  to  hear  of  her  anyhow,  to  see  her 
name  written,  would  be  more  than  I  can 
bear.  My  dear  Brown,  what  am  I  to  do  ? 
Where  can  I  look  for  consolation  or  ease  ? 
If  I  had  any  chance  of  recovery,  this  pas- 
sion would  kill  me." 

Also,  there  need  be  no  doubt  that, 
when  Keats  sailed  from  England  for  the 
last  time,  on  the  Maria  Croivther,  bound 
for  Pisa,  on  September  18,  1820,  he  was 
thinking  of  Fanny  Brawne  as  he  wrote  his 
last  and  greatest  sonnet: 


'Bright  star,  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art! 

Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night, 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart, 

Like  Nature's  patient  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  mov-ing  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 

Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores. 
Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft  fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors: 
No  —  yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable, 

Pillow'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast. 
To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  fall  and  swell. 

Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest, 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender- taken  breath. 
And  so  live  ever  —  or  else  swoon  to  death." 


99 


AB^^raSaw^ 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
It  is  strange  to  think  that  such  infinitesimal 
femininity  as  Fanny  Brawne  should  inspire  a  dying 
man  to  write  such  undying  words  —  O !  why 
were  they  not  written  to  Cleopatra  —  or  "  at 
least  a  Charmian ! "  —  but  the  heart  of  the  poet 
is  a  divine  mystery. 


[100] 


^>^^5p^«?<;t^5>^^^>^^5>=^;5?^^i'^^S?^^>:^^>^»Jto^a>^>^H>^3H>^»^>^^ 


VI 


Heine  and  Mathilde 


THE  love  story  of  Heine  and  his  Mathilde 
is  another  of  those  stories  which  fix  a 
type  of  loving.  It  is  the  love  of  a  man  of  the 
most  brilliant  genius,  the  most  relentless,  mock- 
ing intellect,  for  a  simple,  pretty  woman,  who 
could  no  more  understand  him  than  a  cow  can 
understand  a  comet.  Many  men  of  genius  have 
loved  just  such  women,  and  the  world,  of  course, 
has  Avondered.  How  is  it  that  men  of  genius 
prefer  some  little  Mathilde,  when  the  presidents 
of  so  many  women's  clubs  are  theirs  for  the  ask- 
ing ?  Perhaps  the  problem  is  not  so  difficult  as,  at 
first  sight,  it  may  seem.  After  all,  a  man  of 
genius  is  much  like  other  men.  He  is  no  more 
anxious  than  any  other  man  to  marry  an  encyclo- 
pedia, or  a  university  degree.  And,  more  than 
most  men,  he  is  fitted  to  realize  the  mysterious 
importance  and  satisfaction  of  simple  beauty  — 
[101] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
thougli  it  may  go  quite  unaccompained 
by  "  intellectual "  conversation  —  and  the 
value  of  simple  woman-goodness,  the 
woman-goodness  that  orders  a  household 
so  skilfully  that  your  home  is  a  work  of 
art,  the  woman-goodness  that  glories  in 
that  "  simple  "  thing  we  call  motherhood, 
the  woman-goodness  that  is  almost  happy 
when  you  are  ill  because  it  will  be  so 
wonderful  to  nurse  you.  Superior  per- 
sons often  smile  at  these  Mathildes  of 
the  great.  They  have  smiled  no  little 
at  Mathilde  Crescence  Mirat;  but  he 
who  was  perhaps  the  greatest  mocker 
that  ever  lived  knew  l^etter  than  to  laugh 
at  Mathilde.  The  abysses  of  his  brain 
no  one  can,  or  even  dare,  explore  —  but, 
listen  as  we  will  at  the  door  of  that  in- 
fernal pit  of  laughter,  we  shall  hear  no 
laugh  against  his  faithful  Httle  Mathilde. 
It  is  not  at  Mathilde  he  laughs,  but  at 
the  precious  little  blue-stocking,  who 
freshened  the  last  months  of  his  life  with 
a  final  infatuation  —  that  still  unidenti- 


Heine  and  Mathilde 
fied   "  Camille   Selden "   wlioiii   ho   play- 
fully called  "la  Mouchc." 

"La  Mouche,"  naturally,  had  a  very 
poor  opinion  of  INIadame  Heine,  and  you 
need  not  be  a  cynic  to  enjoy  this  passage 
with  which  she  opens  her  famous  remem- 
brances of  "  The  Last  Days  of  Heinrich 
Heine": 

"  When  I  first  saw  Heinrich  Heine  he 
lived  on  the  fifth  floor  of  a  house  situated 
on  the  Avenue  Matignon,  not  far  from 
the  Rond-Point  of  the  Champs-Elysees. 
His  windows,  overlooking  the  avenue, 
opened  on  a  narrow  balcony,  covered  in 
hot  weather  with  a  striped  linen  awning, 
such  as  appears  in  front  of  small  cafes. 
The  apartments  consisted  of  three  or  four 
rooms  —  the  dining-room  and  two  rooms 
used  by  the  master  and  the  mistress  of 
the  house.  A  very  low  couch,  behind  a 
screen  encased  in  wall-paper,  several 
chairs,  and  opposite  the  door  a  walnut- 
wood  secretary,  formed  the  entire  furni- 
ture of  the  invalid's  chamber.     I  nearly 


Old  Love  Stof'ies  Retold 
forgot  to  mention  two  framed  engravings,  dated 
from  the  early  years  of  Louis  Philippe's  reign  — 
the  '  Reapers '  and  the  '  Fisherman,'  after  Leopold 
Robert.  So  far  the  arrangements  of  the  rooms 
evidenced  no  trace  of  a  woman's  presence,  which 
showed  itself  in  the  adjoining  chamber  by  a  dis- 
play of  imitation  lace,  lined  with  transparent 
yellow  muslin,  and  a  corner-cupboard  covered 
with  brown  velvet,  and  more  especially  by  a  full- 
length  portrait,  placed  in  a  good  light,  of  ]\Ime. 
Heine,  with  dress  and  hair  as  worn  in  her  youth 
—  a  low-necked  black  bodice,  and  bands  of  hair 
plastered  down  her  cheeks  —  a  style  in  the  fashion 
of  about  1840. 

"She  by  no  means  realized  my  ideal  Mme. 
Heine.  I  had  fancied  her  refined,  elegant,  lan- 
guishing, with  a  pale,  earnest  face,  animated  by 
large,  perfidious,  velvety  eyes.  I  saw,  instead, 
a  homely,  dark,  stout  lady,  with  a  high  colour  and 
a  jovial  countenance,  a  person  of  whom  you 
would  say  she  required  plenty  of  exercise  in  the 
open  air.  What  a  painful  contrast  between  the 
robust  woman  and  the  pale,  dying  man,  who, 
with  one  foot  already  in  the  grave,  summoned 
[104] 


Heine  and  Mathilde 
sufficient  ener<ry  to  earn  not  only  enough  for  the 
daily  bread,  but  money  besides  to  purchase 
beautiful  dresses.  The  melancholy  jests,  which 
obliging  biographers  constantly  represent  as 
flashes  of  wit  from  a  husband  too  much  in  love 
not  to  be  profuse,  never  deluded  anybody  who 
visited  that  home.  It  is  absurd  to  transform 
Mme.  Heine  into  an  idyllic  character,  whilst 
the  poet  himself  never  dreamed  of  representing 
her  in  that  guise.  Why  poetize  at  the  expense 
of  truth  .^  —  especially  when  truth  brings  more 
honour  to  the  poet's  memory." 

One  is  sorry  that  Heine  has  not  risen  again 
to  enjoy  this.  One  can  easily  picture  his  read- 
ing it  and,  turning  tenderly  to  his  "Treasure," 
his  "Heart's  Joy,"  with  that  everlasting  boy's 
look  on  his  face,  saying:  "Never  mind,  Dam- 
schen.  We  know,  don't  we  .^  They  think  they 
know,  but  we  know.^'  And  with  what  a  terrible 
snarl  he  would  say,  "  My  ideal  Mme.  Heine ! " 

"My    ideal    Mme.    Heine!"     No    doubt    "la 

Mouche  "  thought  she  might  have  been  that,  had 

all  the  circumstances  been  different,  had  Heine 

not  already  been  married  for  years  and  had  he 

[105] 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
not  been  a  dying  man.  We  may  be 
quite  sure  what  Heine  would  have  thought 
of  the  matter,  and  (juite  sure  what  she 
was  to  him.  Mathilde,  we  know,  was 
unhappy  about  the  visits  of  the  smart 
young  lady  who  talked  Shakespeare  and 
the  musical  glasses  so  glibly,  and  who 
held  her  husband's  hand  as  he  lay  on  his 
mattress-grave,  and  wore  a  general  air 
of  providing  him  with  that  intellectual 
companionship  which  was  so  painfully 
lacking  in  his  home.  Yet  we  who  know 
the  whole  story,  and  know  her  husband 
far  better  than  she,  know  how  little  she 
really  had  to  fear  from  the  visits 
of  "CamiUe  Selden."  To  Heine  "la 
Mouche"  was  merely  a  brilliant  flower, 
with  the  dew  of  youth  upon  her.  His 
gloomy  room  lit  up  as  she  entered,  and 
smelled  sweet  of  her  young  womanhood 
hours  after  she  had  gone.  But  "the 
ideal  Mme.  Heine "  .^  No !  Heine  had 
found  his  real  Mme.  Heine,  the  woman 
who  had  been  faithful  to  him  for  years, 


Heine  and  Mathilde 
had  faced  poverty  and  caluiiiny  with  him, 
and  had  nursed  liini  with  hiu(i^hing 
patience,  day  in  and  day  out,  for  years. 
Heine  had  good  reason  for  knowing  how 
"the  ideal  Mnie.  Heine"  would  have 
treated  him  under  such  circumstances; 
for  little  bas-l)leue  "Mouche"  had  only 
to  have  a  bad  cold  to  stay  away  from  the 
bedside  of  her  hero,  though  she  knew 
how  he  was  counting  the  minutes  to  her 
coming,  in  the  nervous,  hysterical  fashion 
of  the  invalid.  One  of  his  bitterest  letters 
reproaches  her  with  having  kept  him 
waiting  in  this  way: 

"Tear  my  sides,  my  chest,  my  face, 
with  red-hot  pincers,  flay  me  alive,  shoot, 
stone  me,  rather  than  keep  me  waiting. 

"With  all  imaginable  torture,  cruelly 
break  my  limbs,  but  do  not  keep  me  wait- 
ing, for  of  all  torments  disappointed  ex- 
pectation is  the  most  painful.  I  expected 
thee  all  yesterday  afternoon  until  six 
o'clock,  but  thou  didst  not  come,  thou 
witch,  and  I  grew  almost  mad.     Impa- 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
tience  encircled  me  like  the  folds  of  a  viper,  and 
I  bounded  on  my  couch  at  every  ring,  but  oh! 
mortal  anguish,  it  did  not  })ring  thee. 

"Thou  didst  fail  to  come;  I  fret,  I  fume,  and 
Satanas  whispered  mockingly  in  my  ear  —  '  The 
charming  lotus-flower  makes  fun  of  thee,  thou 
old  fool!'" 

"  Camille  Selden "  made  the  mistake  of  her 
life  when  she  imagined  that  Heine  loved  her, 
and  did  not  love  that  somewhat  stout  and  high- 
coloured  Mme.  Heine  who  had  such  bad  taste 
in  lace  and  literature. 

Mathilde,  as  we  know,  was  far  from  being 
Heine's  first  love.  She  was  more  important  — 
his  last.  Heine  himself  tells  us  that  from  his 
boyhood  he  had  been  dangerously  susceptible 
to  women.  He  had  tried  many  cures  for  the 
disease,  but  finally  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
"  woman  is  the  best  antidote  to  woman  " —  though, 
"  to  be  sure,  this  is  driving  out  Satan  with  Beelze- 
bub." There  had  been  many  loves  in  Heine's 
life  before,  one  day  in  the  Quartier  Latin, 
somewhere  in  the  year  1835,  he  had  met  saucy, 
laughing  Mathilde  Crescence  Mirat.  There  had 
[108] 


Heme  and  Mathilde 
l)een  "red  Sefchen,"  the  executioner's  daughter, 
whose  red  hair  as  she  wound  it  round  her  throat 
fascinated  Heine  with  its  grim  suggestion  of 
blood.  There  had  been  his  cousin  Amahe,  whose 
marriage  to  another  is  said  to  have  been  the  secret 
spring  of  sorrow  by  which  Heine's  laughter  was 
fed.  And  there  had  been  others,  whose  names 
—  imaginary,  maybe,  in  that  they  were  doubtless 
the  imaginary  names  of  real  women  —  are 
familiar  to  all  readers  of  Heine's  poetry:  Sera- 
phine,  Angelique,  Diane,  Hortense,  Clarisse, 
Emma,  and  so  on. 

But  she  is  loved  best  who  is  loved  last;  and 
when,  after  those  months  of  delirious  dissipation 
in  Paris,  which  all  too  soon  were  to  be  so  exor- 
bitantly paid  for  by  years  of  suffering,  Heine  met 
Mathilde,  there  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  Heine  met 
his  wife.  His  reminiscent  fancy  might  senti- 
mentalize about  his  lost  Amalie,  but  no  one  can 
read  his  letters,  not  so  much  to,  as  about,  Mathilde 
without  realizing  that  he  came  as  near  to  loving 
her  as  a  man  of  his  temperament  can  come  near 
to  loving  any  one. 

Though,  to  begin  with,  they  were  not  married 
[109] 


F 


"> 


\ 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
in  the  conventional  sense,  but  ''kept 
house"  together  in  the  fashion  of  the 
Quarter,  there  seems  no  question  that 
Heine  was  faithful  to  Mathilde  —  to 
whom  in  his  letters  to  his  friends  he  al- 
ways referred  as  his  *'  wife  "  —  and  that 
their  relation,  in  everything  but  name, 
was  a  true  marriage.  Just  before  he 
met  Mathilde,  Heine  had  written  to  his 
friend  and  publisher,  Campe,  that  he 
was  at  last  sick  to  death  of  the  poor 
pleasures  which  had  held  him  too  long. 
"I  beUeve,"  he  writes,  "that  my  soul  is 
at  last  purified  of  all  its  dross;  hence- 
forth my  verses  will  be  the  more  beauti- 
ful, my  books  the  more  harmonious.  At 
all  events,  I  know  this  —  that  at  the 
present  moment  everything  impure  and 
vulgar  fills  me  with  positive  disgust." 

It  was  at  this  moment,  disgusted  with 
those  common  illusions  miscalled  pleas- 
ure, that  Heine  met  Mathilde,  and  was 
attracted  by  what  one  might  call  the 
fresh  elementalism  of  her  nature.     That 


Heine  a?id  Mathilde 
his  love  began  with  that  fine  intoxication 
of  wonder  and  passion  without  which  no 
love  can  endure,  this  letter  to  his  friend 
August  Lewald  will  show :  "  How  can  I 
apologize  for  not  writing  to  you  ?  And 
you  are  kind  enough  to  offer  me  the  good 
excuse  that  your  letter  must  have  been 
lost.  No,  I  will  confess  the  whole  truth. 
I  duly  received  it  —  but  at  a  time  when 
I  was  up  to  my  neck  in  a  love  affair  that 
I  have  not  yet  got  out  of.  Since  October 
nothing  has  been  of  any  account  with  me 
that  was  not  directly  connected  with  this. 
I  have  neglected  everything,  I  see  nobody, 
and  give  a  sigh  whenever  I  think  of  my 
friends.  ...  So  I  have  often  sighed  to 
think  that  you  must  misunderstand  my 
silence,  yet  I  could  not  fairly  set  myself 
down  to  write.  And  that  is  all  I  can  tell 
you  to-day;  for  my  cheeks  are  in  such  a 
flame,  and  my  brain  reels  so  with  the  scent 
of  flowers,  that  I  am  in  no  condition  to 
talk  sensibly  to  you. 

"Did  you  ever  read  King  Solomon's 

111 


t 


X 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Song?     Just  read  it.  and  you  will  there  find  all 
I  could  say  to-day." 

So  wrote  Heine  at  the  beginning  of  his  love. 
When  that  love  had  been  living  for  eight  years,  he 
was  still  writing  in  no  less  lover-like  a  fashion. 
"  My  wife,"  says  he  to  his  brother  ]Max  in  a  letter 
dated  April  12,  1843,  "  is  a  good  child  —  natural, 
gay,  capricious,  as  only  French  women  can  be, 
and  she  never  allows  me  for  one  moment  to  sink 
into  those  melancholy  reveries  for  which  I  have 
so  strong  a  disposition." 

When  Heine  wrote  this  letter,  Mathilde  had 
been  his  "legal"  wife  for  something  like  a  year 
and  a  half.  Heine  had  resorted  to  the  formaliz- 
ing of  their  union  under  the  pressure  of  one  of 
those  circumstances  which  compel  a  man  to 
think  more  of  a  woman  than  of  an  idea.  He  was 
going  to  fight  a  duel  with  one  of  his  and  her 
cowardly  German  traducers,  and  that  there 
should  be  no  doubt  of  her  position  in  the  event 
of  his  death,  he  duly  married  her.  Writing  to 
his  friend  Lewald  once  more,  on  the  13th  of 
October,  1841,  he  says:  "You  will  have  learned 
that,  a  few  days  before  the  duel,  to  make 
[112] 


Heinrich  H 


eiup- 


Hehie  and  Mathilde 
Mathilde's  position  secure,  I  felt  it  right  to  turn 
my  free  marriage  into  a  lawful  one.  Tins  con- 
jugal duel,  which  will  never  cease  till  the  death 
of  one  or  the  other  of  us,  is  far  more  perilous  than 
any  brief  meeting  with  a  Solomon  Straus  of  Jew 
Lane,  Frankfort." 

His  friend  Campe  had  been  previously  ad- 
vised of  "  my  marriage  with  the  lovely  and  honest 
creature  who  has  lived  by  my  side  for  years  as 
Mathilde  Heine,  was  always  respected  and  looked 
upon  as  my  wife,  and  was  defiled  by  foul  names 
only  by  some  scandal-loving  Germans  of  the 
Frankfort  clique." 

Heine's  duel  resulted  in  nothing  more  serious 
than  a  flesh-wound  on  the  hip.  But  alas!  the 
wild  months  of  dissipation  before  he  had  met 
]\Iathilde  were  before  long  to  be  paid  for  by  that 
long,  excruciating  suffering  which  is  one  of  the 
most  heroic  spectacles  in  the  history  of  literature. 
It  is  the  paradox  of  the  mocker  that  he  often  dis- 
plays the  virtues  and  sentiments  which  he  mocks, 
much  more  manfully  than  the  professional  sen- 
timentalist. Courage  and  laughter  are  old  friends, 
and  Heine's  laughter  —  his  later  laughter,  at 
[113] 


Old  Love  Sto?'ies  Retold 
least  —  was  perhaps  mostly  courage.  If 
for  no  other  reason,  one  would  hope  for 
a  hereafter  —  so  that  Charles  II.  and 
Heine  may  have  met  and  compared  notes 
upon  dying.  Heine  was  indeed  an  "un- 
conscionable long  time  a-dying,"  but 
then  he  died  with  such  brilliant  patience, 
with  such  good  humour,  and,  in  the 
meanwhile,  contrived  to  write  such  haunt- 
ing poetry,  such  saturnine  criticism. 

And,  all  the  time,  during  those  ten 
years  of  dying,  his  faithful  "Treasure" 
was  by  his  side.  The  people  who  "  under- 
stood" him  better,  who  read  his  books 
and  delighted  in  his  genius,  somehow  or 
other  seemed  to  forget  the  lonely  Prome- 
theus on  the  mattress-rock  at  No.  3 
Avenue  Matignon.  It  was  1854  when 
Heine  was  painfully  removed  there.  It 
was  so  long  ago  as  the  May  of  1848  that 
he  had  walked  out  for  the  last  time.  His 
difficult  steps  had  taken  him  to  the 
Louvre,  and,  broken  in  body  and  nerves 
—  but    never   in    spirit  —  he    had   burst 


Heine  cnid  Mathilde 

into  tears  before  the  Venus  of  Milo.  It 
was  a  characteristic  pilgrimage  —  though 
it  was  only  a  "  Mouche  "  who  could  have 
taken  Heine  seriously  when  he  said  that 
he  loved  only  statues  and  dead  women. 
There  was  obviously  a  deep  strain  of  the 
macabre  and  the  bizarre  in  Heine's  na- 
ture ;  but  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  he 
loved  his  Mathilde  as  well. 

That  Heine  was  under  no  illusion  about 
Mathilde,  his  letters  show.  He  would 
laugh  at  her  on  occasion,  and  even  be  a 
little  bitter;  but  if  we  are  not  to  laugh  at 
those  we  love,  whom  are  we  to  laugh  at  ? 
So,  at  all  events,  thought  Heine.  Su- 
perior people  might  wonder  that  a  man 
with  Heine's  "intellect,"  et  cetera,  could 
put  up,  day  after  day,  with  a  little  bour- 
geoise  like  Mathilde.  But  Heine  might 
easily  have  retorted :  "  Where  anywhere  in 
the  world  are  you  going  to  find  me  a 
woman  who  is  my  equal,  who  is  my  true 
mate  "i  You  will  bring  me  cultivated 
governesses,  or  titled  ladies  who  preside 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
over  salons,  or  anemic  little  literary  women  with 
their  imitative  verse  or  their  amateurish  political 
dreams.  No,  thank  you.  I  am  a  man.  I  am  a 
sick,  sad  man.  I  need  a  kind,  beautiful  woman 
to  love  and  take  care  of  me.  She  must  be  beauti- 
ful, remember,  as  well  as  kind  —  and  she  must 
be  not  merely  a  nurse,  but  a  woman  I  can  love. 
If  she  shouldn't  understand  my  writings,  what 
does  it  matter  '■f  We  don't  marry  a  wife  for  that. 
I  am  not  looking  for  some  little  patronizing  blue- 
stocking —  who,  in  her  heart,  thinks  herself  a 
better  writer  than  myself  —  but  for  a  simple 
woman  of  the  elements,  no  more  learned  than  a 
rose,  and  as  meaningless,  if  you  will,  as  the  rising 
moon." 

Just  such  a  woman  Heine  found  in  his  Mathilde, 
and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  for  years  before 
the  illness  which  left  him,  so  to  speak,  at  her 
mercy,  he  had  loved  and  been  faithful  to  her. 

There  are  letters  which  seem  to  show  that 
Mathilde  had  the  defects  of  those  qualities  of 
buxom  light-heartedness,  of  eternal  sunshine, 
which  had  kept  a  fickle  Heine  so  faithful.  Some- 
times, one  gathers,  she  as  little  realized  the 
[116] 


Heine  and  Mathilde 
tragedy  of  Heine's  suffering  as  she  understood 
his  writings.  As  such  a  woman  must,  she  often 
left  Heine  very  lonely;  and  seemed  to  feel  more 
for  her  cat,  or  her  parrot  "  Cocotte,"  than  her 
immortal,  dying  huslmnd. 

"  Oh,  what  a  night  we  have  had ! "  Heine 
exclaimed  one  day  to  his  friend  Meissner.  "I 
have  not  been  able  to  close  an  eye.  We  have  had 
an  accident  in  our  house;  the  cat  fell  from  the 
mantelpiece  and  scratched  her  right  ear;  it  even 
bled  a  little.  That  gave  us  great  sorrow.  My 
good  Mathilde  remained  up  and  applied  cold 
poultices  to  the  cat  all  night  long.  For  mc  she 
never  remains  awake." 

And  another  time,  he  said,  even  more  bitterly, 
to  another  friend:  "I  felt  rather  anxious  yester- 
day. My  wife  had  finished  her  toilet  as  early  as 
two  o'clock  and  had  gone  to  take  a  drive.  She 
promised  to  be  back  at  four  o'clock.  It  struck 
half-past  five  and  she  had  not  got  })ack  yet.  The 
clock  struck  eight  and  my  anxiety  increased. 
Had  she,  perhaps,  got  tired  of  her  sick  husband, 
and  eloped  with  a  cunning  seducer  .^  In  my  pain- 
ful doubt  I  sent  the  sick-nurse  to  her  chamber  to 
[117] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
see  whether  '  Cocotte '  the  parrot  was 
still  there.  Yes,  '  Cocotte '  was  still 
there.  That  set  me  at  ease  again,  and 
I  began  to  breathe  more  freely.  AVith- 
out  '  Cocotte '  the  dear  woman  would 
never  go  away." 

A  great  man  like  Heine  must  neces- 
sarily have  such  moods  about  a  little 
woman  like  Mathilde;  but  the  important 
fact  remains  that  for  some  twenty  years 
Heine  was  Mathilde's  faithful  husband, 
and  that  the  commonplace,  pretty,  igno- 
rant, pleasure-loving,  bourgeoise  Mathilde 
was  good  and  faithful  to  a  crippled,  in- 
comprehensible mate.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  the  wonder  in  this  marriage  is  even 
more  on  the  side  of  Mathilde  than  of 
Heine.  Think  what  such  a  woman  must 
have  had  to  forego,  to  suffer,  to  "  put  up 
with,"  with  such  a  man  —  a  man,  re- 
member, whose  real  significance  must 
have  been  Chinese  to  her.  Surely,  all 
of  us  who  truly  love  love  by  faith,  and 
the  love  of  Heine  for  Mathilde,  and  of 


Heine  and  Mathilde 
Mathilde  for  Heine,  alike  is  only  to  be 
explained  by  that  mysterious  explanation 
—  faith. 

That  Heine  understood  his  love  for 
Mathilde,  so  far  as  any  man  of  genius  can 
understand  his  love,  and  was  satisfied 
with  it  so  far  as  any  man  of  genius  can  be 
with  any  love,  we  may  be  quite  sure.  His 
many  letters  about  her,  and  to  her,  prove 
it.  All  the  elemental  simplicities  of  her 
nature  —  the  very  bourgeoise  traits  which 
made  his  friends  wonder  —  alike  inter- 
ested him,  and  drew  him  closer  toward 
her.  When  she  weaves  a  rug  for  his 
friend  Lewald,  how  seriously  he  takes  it! 
He  could  laugh  at  all  things  in  heaven 
and  earth,  but  when  Mathilde  weaves  a 
rug  for  his  friend  he  takes  life  seriously. 

How  "  domestic "  Heine  could  be  is 
witnessed  by  a  letter  of  his  —  to  Mathilde 
from  Hamburg  in  1823  —  in  regard  to  her 
buying  a  hat  for  his  sister  and  another  for 
his  niece  —  giving  careful  directions  as 
to  style  and  price.     Mathilde  and  he  had 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
then  been  each  other's  for  over  eight  years,  but 
none  tlie  less  —  nay,  let  us  say  all  the  more  — 
he  ended  his  letter:  "Adieu!  I  think  only  of  thee, 
and  I  love  thee  like  the  madman  that  I  am." 

Perhaps  the  truest  proof  of  Heine's  love  for 
Mathilde  is  the  way  in  which,  in  his  will,  he 
flattered  his  despicable  cousin,  Carl  Heine,  for 
her  sake,  so  that  she  might  not  suffer  any  loss  of 
his  inheritance.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Heine 
knew  the  worth  of  his  Mathilde.  If  so  terrible 
a  critic  of  human  nature  was  satisfied  to  love 
and  live  with  her  for  so  many  years,  we  may  be 
sure  that  Mathilde  was  a  remarkable  woman. 
She  didn't  indeed  talk  poetry  and  philosophy, 
like  little  "Mouche,"  but  then  the  women  who 
do  that  are  legion ;  and  Mathilde  was  one  of  those 
rarer  women  who  are  just  women,  and  love  they 
know  not  why. 

In  saying  this,  we  mustn't  forget  that  "  Camille 
Selden"  said  it  was  ridiculous  to  sentimentalize 
about  Mme.  Heine.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  we 
must  remember  Heine's  point  of  view.  When 
"  Camille  Selden "  first  sought  his  acquaintance, 
he  had  been  living  with  ^lathilde  for  some 
[120] 


Hehie  and  Mathilde 
twenty  years.  Men  of  genius  —  and  even  ordi- 
nary men  —  are  not  apt  to  live  with  women  they 
do  not  love  for  twenty  years;  and  that  Heine  did 
perhaps  the  one  wise  thing  of  his  life  in  marrying 
his  Mathilde  there  can  be  very  little  doubt. 

To  a  man  such  as  Heine  a  woman  is  not  so 
much  a  personality  as  a  beautiful  embodiment 
of  the  elements :  "  Earth,  air,  fire  and  water  met 
together  in  a  rose."  If  she  is  beautiful,  he  will 
waive  "intellectual  sympathy";  if  she  is  good, 
he  will  not  mind  her  forgetting  the  titles  of  his 
books.  When  she  becomes  a  mother,  he  — 
being  a  man  of  genius  —  understands  that  she 
is  a  more  wonderful  being  than  he  can  ever  hope 
to  be. 

Much  has  been  said  about  the  unhappy  mar- 
riages of  great  writers.  The  true  reason  too 
often  has  been  that  they  have  married  literary 
amateurs  instead  of  women  and  wives.  Heine 
was  wiser.  No  one  would,  of  course,  pretend 
that  Mathilde  was  his  mate.  But,  then,  what 
woman  could  have  been  ?  Certainly  not  that 
little  literary  prig  he  called  his  "Mouche." 

[121] 


VII 


Ferdinand    Lassalle    and 
Helene  von  Donniges 

THERE  are  two  women  still  living 
somewhere  in  the  world  whom  I 
always  think  of  as  figures  peculiarly 
tragic,  and  whom  I  often  find  myself 
thinking  of  together.  They  are  both 
women  with  historic  love  stories,  and 
love  stories  —  here  is  the  link  of  associa- 
tion between  them  —  in  which  not  only 
their  own  destinies  were  concerned  but 
great  national  issues  disastrously  in- 
volved. There  was  a  moment,  a  few 
years  ago,  when  it  really  seemed  possible 
that  Ireland's  long  dream  of  freedom 
was  about  to  come  true.  Parnell's  pa- 
tient strength  had  suddenly  found  a 
Titanic  ally  in   Gladstone's  tremendous 


122 


Lassalle  and  Hele?ie  von  D'ofmiges 
moral  prestige,  and  for  a  brief  moment 
the  issue  hung  tremulous  in  the  scales  of 
Time.  It  was  a  fateful  moment  in 
Ireland's  history  which  can  hardly  come 
again.  It  was  her  one  desperate  oppor- 
tunity in  a  hundred  years.  How  and 
why  she  lost  it,  the  world  well  knows. 

The  story  of  Ferdinand  Lassalle  and 
Helene  Von  Donniges  is  similarly  the 
story  of  a  "  lost  leader "  and  his  great 
passion;  and,  if  the  fall  of  Parnell  was  the 
deathblow  to  Irish  liberty,  who  shall  say 
what  the  great  democratic  movement 
throughout  the  world  has  lost  by  the 
tragically  frivolous  death  of  Lassalle.'^ 
He,  too,  fell  at  one  of  those  fortunate, 
fateful  moments  in  the  history  of  a  great 
cause  when  the  moment  can  only  be 
seized  by  some  magnetic,  masterful  leader 
and  if  not  so  seized  is  lost,  the  advance 
that  might  have  been  made  indefinitely 
postponed,  and  even  the  ground  already 
won  reconquered  by  reaction. 

In    remarking    these    tragic    interfer- 


Old  hove  Stones  Retold 
ences  of  the  passion  of  love  in  national  destinies, 
it  is,  I  hope,  needless  to  say  that  none  but  narrow 
natures  can  feel  bitterly  toward  the  sad  women 
so  disastrously  beloved,  or  hold  the  absurd  doc- 
trine that  public  men  should  keep  themselves 
aloof  from  the  inspiring  passions  of  our  common 
nature.  I  say  "  inspiring  "  advisedly,  for  whereas 
such  stories  as  the  one  I  have  to  retell  illustrate 
the  sheer  malignity  of  ill-luck  which  sometimes 
attends  the  loves  of  even  private,  as  well  as  pub- 
lic, persons,  the  instances  are  far  more  numerous 
where  lives  of  great  public  usefulness  have  been 
throughout  secretly  nourished  and  inspired  by 
the  love  that  moves  not  only  the  sun  and  stars 
but  even  parliaments  and  field-guns. 

Thus    is    a    man    created  —  to   do   all    his    work    for   some 

woman, 
Do  it  for  her,  and  her  only,  only  to  lay  at  her  feet; 
Yet  in  his  talk  to  pretend,  shyly  and  fiercely  maintain  it. 
That  all  is  for  love  of  the  work  —  toil  just  for  love  of  the 

toil. 
Yet  was  there  never   a    battle,    but    side    by    side   with    the 

soldiers. 
Stern    like    the    serried    corn,    fluttered    the    souls    of    the 

women, 
As  in  and  out  through    the    corn    go  the  blue-eyed   shapes 

of  the  flowers: 

[  12-t  ] 


Lassalle  and  Helene  von  D'dnniges 

Yet  was   there   never  a  strength    but    a   woman's   softness 

upheld  it, 
Never  a  Thebes  of  our  dreams,  but  it  rose  to  the  music  of 

women  — 
Iron  and  steel  it  might  stand,  but  the  women  had   breathed 

on  the  building: 
Yea,   no  man  shall   make  or  unmake,    ere    some    woman 

hath  made  him  a  man. 


One  occasionally  encounters  in  history  a  great 
career  in  which  woman  has  played  no  such  part, 
but  the  rule  unquestionably  is  that  the  greater 
personalities  of  the  world,  whether  they  be  states- 
men, soldiers,  artists,  or  even  philosophers,  have 
been  exceptionally  subject  to  the  influence  of 
woman.  Of  no  famous  man  has  this  ever  been 
truer  than  of  Lassalle.  Years  before  he  met 
Helene  von  Donniges  he  was  as  well  known  for 
his  love  affairs  as  his  politics;  for,  strikingly  hand- 
some and  masterful,  he  possessed,  too,  just  that 
dash  and  brilliancy  which  women  find  irresistible. 

He  was  born  on  April  11,  1825,  in  Breslau, 
Prussia,  of  Jewish  parents,  and  himself  outwardly 
always  professed  the  Jewish  religion.  His  father, 
being  a  merchant,  had  destined  him  for  a  busi- 
ness career,  but  the  son's  inclinations  were  in 
other  directions,  and  he  went  to  the  university 
[1^5] 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
instead.  Philosophy  and  philology  were 
the  studies  most  attractive  to  him.  From 
tlio  university  he  went  to  Dlisseldorf, 
and  thence  to  Paris,  where,  at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  he  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Heine,  who,  with  his  customary  insight, 
divined  the  force  and  significance  of  his 
nature,  and,  with  his  customary  aptness, 
found  for  him  tlie  appropriate  phrase.  He 
was  born  to  die  like  a  gladiator,  he  said, 
with  a  smile  on  his  lips.  A  gladiator 
indeed  he  was,  though  it  was  hardly  a 
gladiator's  death  a  blundering  destiny 
called  upon  him  so  ignominiously  and 
wastefully  to  die.  So  impressed  was 
Heine  with  the  work  he  deemed  Lassalle 
capable  of  doing,  that  he  even  hailed  him 
as  "The  Messiah  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century." 

As  Lassalle's  public  life  ends  with  the 
name  of  a  woman,  so  does  it  begin. 
From  Paris  I.assalle  returned  to  Dlissel- 
dorf, and  there  made  the  acquaintance 
of  a  woman  who  was  to  be  intimately 


Lassalle  and  Hclcne  vo?i  Dmniges 
associated  witli  him  continuously  till  his 
death.  This  was  the  Countess  Hatzfeldt, 
a  woman  who  was  suffering  at  the  hands 
of  a  brutal  husband  just  such  a  wrong  as 
was  calculated  to  set  Lassalle's  chival- 
rous, combative  nature  on  fire.  Count 
Hatzfeldt,  a  dissolute  nobleman  of  im- 
mense wealth,  lived  openly  with  his  mis- 
tress, Baroness  von  Meyerdorf,  at  his 
castle  near  Dusseldorf;  and  his  Countess, 
who  had  left  him,  taking  her  two  children 
with  her,  tried  in  vain  to  obtain  a  divorce 
and  a  suitable  settlement  for  herself  and 
the  children.  On  becoming  her  friend, 
Lassalle  took  up  the  fight  with  charac- 
teristic energy,  —  a  fight  which  was  to 
last  nine  years,  —  and  won  it  at  last  by 
his  brilliant  and  patient  advocacy.  Mean- 
while, Lassalle  lived  with  the  Countess  in 
her  Dusseldorf  home,  and  one  cannot 
wonder  that  the  world  had  something  to 
say  on  the  matter,  for,  though  indeed  the 
Countess  was  twice  his  age,  a  beautiful 
woman    of    thirty-eight    might    well    be 


■m-f^ 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
something  more  tlian  a  mother  to  a  handsome 
young  man  of  nineteen. 

During  these  years  Lassalle  also  threw  him- 
self vehemently  into  politics,  becoming  one  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Social-Democratic  party,  and 
undergoing  a  six-months'  imprisonment  for  one 
of  his  daring  speeches.  At  the  conclusion  of  the 
Countess'  case  he  was  a  marked  man,  and  uni- 
versally regarded  as  one  of  the  most  powerful  and 
dangerous  personalities  in  the  Liberal  camp. 
The  Countess  and  he  now  left  Diisseldorf,  and 
settled  in  Berlin,  where  Lassalle  speedily  made 
a  place  for  himself  in  the  best  intellectual  society 
of  the  capital.  Humboldt  called  him  a  "  Wunder- 
kind,"  and  became  his  close  friend;  and  Bis- 
marck, though  so  opposed  to  his  political  theo- 
ries, made  no  secret  of  his  admiration  for  his 
great  gifts,  and  of  the  interest  he  took  in  his 
conversation. 

Although,  as  I  have  said,  Lassalle  was  highly 
susceptible  to  the  charms  of  women,  none  of  his 
earlier  love  affairs  seem  to  have  taken  any  serious 
hold  upon  him.  The  women  to  whom  he  made 
love  were  aware  that  ambition  held  the  first 
[128] 


Lassalle  and  Hele?ie  von  Dd?iniges 
place  in  his  heart,  and  he  took  care  to  make  it 
clear  that  marriage  did  not  enter  into  the  scheme 
of  his  life. 

One  story  goes,  however,  that  some  two  years 
before  he  met  Helene,  the  possible  charm  of  the 
married  state  had  been  momentarily  revealed  to 
him  by  a  brief  attachment  to  a  young  Russian 
lady  named  Sophie  Solutzeff.  But  Sophie,  it  is 
said,  while  admiring  Lassalle  as  a  genius,  was 
not  drawn  to  him  as  a  lover,  and  his  own  feeling 
for  her  being  half-hearted,  the  relationship  died  a 
natural  death.  An  acute  critic  of  Lassalle's  story 
(Mr.  Clement  Shorter  in  his  interesting  intro- 
duction to  Mr.  George  Meredith's  "Tragic 
Comedians")  throws  discredit  at  this  tale,  com- 
ing as  it  does  through  Countess  Hatzfeldt,  who, 
as  will  be  seen  later,  had  her  own  reasons  for 
wishing  to  show  that  the  passion  which  proved 
fatal  to  Lassalle  was  no  isolated  experience  in  his 
life,  but  rather  one  of  a  number  and  of  a  nature 
to  which  his  friends  were  so  accustomed  that  they 
grew  naturally  to  underrate  their  seriousness. 
Those  friends,  alas !  from  first  to  last  were  to  play 
an  unfortunate  part  in  the  tragedy  —  no  doubt, 
[1^9] 


^ 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
after  tlie  nianner  of  friends,  with  the  best 
intentions.  It  was  friends  who,  before 
Ferdinand  Lassalle  and  Helene  von 
Donniges  had  met  or  even  heard  of  each 
other,  prepared  them  to  fall  into  each 
other's  arms  by  stimulating  Helene's 
curiosity  in  a  certain  brilliant  and 
dangerous  "Lassalle."  Why,  they  were 
so  evidently  born  for  each  other!  They 
must  meet! 

"  Surely  you  know  Lassalle  If "  said 
young  Baron  Korff  to  Helene  at  a  ball, 
one  evening  in  1862.  "Only  a  woman 
who  knows  him,  and  shares  his  opinions, 
can  speak  like  that!" 

But  Helene  apparently  had  never  even 
heard  the  name  of  the  man  who  was 
soon  to  mean  so  much  in  her  life. 

"Then  I  pity  you  both  every  hour 
that  you  remain  apart,  for  you  were 
made  for  each  other, "  was  Korff's 
prophetic  reply. 

Again,  at  a  dinner-party,  Dr.  Karl 
Oldenberg  had  exclaimed:  "You  are  the 


TBU" 


Lassallc  and  Helenc  ""con  Donntges 
only  woman  I  ever  met  who  seems  fitted 
to  be  Lassalle's  wife!" 

If  only  other  friends  of  the  two  fated 
ones  had  realized  their  ordained  affinity, 
their  story  might  have  been  different;  and 
what  wonder,  with  such  stimulating  pre- 
dictions in  her  mind,  that  Helene  —  prac- 
tised coquette,  too,  as  she  already  was  — 
should  have  developed  a  mood  of  inflam- 
matory expectancy  for  the  moment  when 
she  did  actually  meet  her  man  of  destiny. 

That  fateful  meeting  at  last  took  place 
at  an  evening  party  given  by  a  friend, 
Frau  Hirsemenzel,  who  was  in  Helene's 
confidence,  and  so  dramatically  instan- 
taneous was  their  recognition  of  affinity 
that  their  fellow  guests  were  conscious 
of  it,  too,  and  remembered  the  electrical 
flash  and  suddenness  of  it  years  after. 

"And  this  is  how  you  look!  This  is 
you !  Yes,  yes,  it  is  as  I  thought,  and  it  is 
all  right!"  were  Lassalle's  first  words,  as 
he  looked  at  her,  even  before  they  had 
been   introduced   to   each   other.     Intro- 


131 


Old  Love  Stones  Retold 
duced!     What     need     had     they     of     introduc- 
tion ! 

"  What  is  the  use  ? "  Lassalle  had  added,  lay- 
ing his  hand  on  her  arm.  "  We  know  each  other 
already.  You  know  who  I  am;  and  you  are 
'Brlinhilde,'  Adrienne  Cardoville,  the  'fox'  Korff 
has  told   me   about  —  in   one   word  —  Helene ! " 

Never  was  such  a  whirlwind  wooing.  Helene 
felt  herself,  as  Meredith  phrases  it,  "  carried  off 
on  the  back  of  a  centaur."  Each  felt  so  abso- 
lutely and  irrevocably  each  other's  that  formali- 
ties seemed  silly.  Lassalle  spoke  to  Helene  with 
the  famihar  "  Du,"  as  though  they  had  been 
each  other's  for  years,  and  when  the  party  broke 
up  at  four  in  the  morning,  he  carried  her  in  liis 
arms  down  the  steps  of  the  house,  —  and  yet 
even  to  her  chaperon,  a  lady  quite  demure  and 
strict  in  her  opinions,  it  all  seemed  the  natural 
thing  to  do  —  as,  of  course,  it  was. 

"It  was  rather  bold  and  unusual,"  this  lady 
had  said  afterward,  "  but  if  he  had  taken  you  by 
the  hand,  and  walked  off  with  you  altogether,  I 
should  not  have  thought  it  strange;  you  seemed 
to  belong  to  each  other  so  entirely." 
[132] 


Lassalle  and  Helene  von  Donniges 

In  fact,  Lassalle  and  Helene  had  acted  with 
the  simplicity  of  a  great  feeling,  and  such  sim- 
plicity always  brings  with  it  its  own  fitness,  and, 
however  astonishing,  compels  our  respect,  like 
any  other  masterful  play  of  the  elements. 

Nature  had  thus  manifestly  joined  these  two 
people.     It  was  now  for  man  to  put  them  asunder. 

Lassalle  was  for  immediately  making  formal 
application  for  her  hand,  but  Helene,  with  that 
vacillation  which  was  to  prove  their  ruin,  begged 
him  to  wait.  She  was  already  aware  of  the 
probable  attitude  of  her  family  toward  Lassalle. 
When  she  had  first  heard  his  name,  she  had  in- 
quired about  him  of  her  grandmother,  with 
whom  she  was  living  in  Berlin,  and  had  been 
told  that  he  was  a  shameless  demagogue,  whom 
it  would  be  impossible  for  her  to  know.  Stories, 
too,  about  his  relations  with  Countess  Hatzfeldt 
had  been  brought  to  her;  and  how  her  father,  a 
stern  old  aristocrat,  high  in  the  diplomatic  ser- 
vice, would  entertain  the  idea  of  an  alliance  w^ith 
the  Socialist  Messiah  she  could  surmise. 

Besides,  she  was  already  half  engaged  to  a 
young  Wallachian  prince,  Yanko  von  Racowitza, 
[133] 


r  . 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
a  gentle  lad,  whom  she  treated  much 
like  a  pet  animal,  and  called  her  "  Moorish 
page.'*  Yanko  was  the  last  of  a  long 
series  of  amourettes  which  had  no  doubt 
somewhat  sapped  her  power  of  serious 
loving.  He  was  an  engaging  companion, 
a  fine  musician,  and  her  devoted  slave, 
fetching  and  carrying  for  her,  and  obe- 
dient to  her  every  whim.  There  is 
something  appealingly  pathetic  about 
this  young  prince,  and  of  all  the  secondary 
actors  in  the  tragedy  now  about  to  be- 
gin, he  is  the  only  gracious,  if  piteous, 
figure. 

Helene  was  nineteen  and  Lassalle 
thirty-eight  when  they  first  met.  Their 
second  meeting  did  not  take  place  for 
some  months.  Meanwhile,  Helene's 
family  had  "cut"  the  lady  at  whose 
house  the  first  eventful  meeting  had 
taken  place,  and  Lassalle  had  tried  in 
vain  to  see  her.  Chance  brought  them 
together  again  at  a  concert  in  Berlin. 
Helene  was  then  with  Lawyer  Holthoff 


Lassal/e  and  Helene  von  D'onniges 
and  his  wife,  old  friends  of  her  family,  and 
friends,  too,  of  Lassalle.  The  Holthoffs, 
therefore,  played  good  angels  to  the  lovers, 
and  several  times  connived  at  their  meet- 
ing, with  the  result  that  their  first  feeling 
for  each  other  was  confirmed  and  deep- 
ened. Still,  Helene  weakly  kept  up  her 
relationship  with  Yanko,  telling  him, 
however,  that  if  ever  Lassalle  should  want 
her,  she  would  break  their  engagement, 
and  give  up  everything,  to  go  to  him. 
Yanko  docilely  accepted  the  situation, 
saying  she  must  do  what  was  best  for  her 
own  happiness.  If  the  issue  had  been 
left  to  poor  Yanko,  our  lovers  would  never 
have  been  tragic  comedians. 

But  sterner  and  more  selfish  personali- 
ties than  Helene's  Moorish  page  were 
soon  to  be  engaged  on  both  sides,  and 
even  friends  who  wished  their  story  well 
were  to  blunder  on  their  behalf.  Holt- 
hoff ,  surely  with  the  best  will  in  the  world, 
had  approached  Helene's  grandmother  in 
Lassalle's  interest.    The  grandmother  had 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
written  to  Herr  von  Donniges,  and  from  him  had 
come  an  uncompromising  refusal  to  consider 
Lassalle's  offer  under  any  circumstances.  The 
idea  of  his  daughter  marrying  one  who  was  at 
once  a  Jew  and  a  "  shameless  demagogue  "  would 
naturally  seem  preposterous  to  him. 

At  this  point  of  the  story  it  is  impossible  not 
to  feel  a  certain  lull  in  the  feelings  of  both  lovers. 
For  several  months  they  were  both  within  reach 
of  each  other  in  Berlin,  and,  though  no  doubt 
there  were  social  difficulties  in  the  way  of  their 
meeting,  they  do  not  seem  to  have  been  insu- 
perable. Yet  they  never  met,  though  they 
continued  to  hear  of  each  other  through  the  Holt- 
hoffs.  When  one  remembers  their  first  fiery 
meeting,  with  all  its  wild  vows,  and  then  sees 
these  months  going  by,  with  Helene  apparently 
content  with  her  life  as  a  social  butterfly,  and 
Lassalle  whole-heartedly  absorbed  in  his  political 
career,  we  cannot  help  wondermg  if  the  two  were, 
after  all,  as  much  in  love  as  they  thought.  For, 
when  they  really  wished  to  meet,  there  seems  to 
have  been  no  trouble  about  arranging  it,  as  be- 
fore, through  the  Holthoffs.  Lassalle's  sister, 
[136] 


Lassalle  cuid  Helcne  vo?i  Do?i?iiges 
Frail  von  Friedland,  was  on  a  visit  to  Berlin,  and 
desired  to  meet  Helene,  so  Helene  and  she  met, 
to  their  mutual  liking,  at  the  Holthoffs'. 

Presently  it  was  suggested  that  Helene  should 
call  Herr  Holthoff  from  his  library.  On  opening 
the  door  she  found  him  there  —  with  Lassalle. 

From  this  interview  we  miss  the  splendid  im- 
patience of  the  night  of  the  whirlwind  wooing. 
A  leisurely  diplomacy  had  taken  its  place.  It 
was  March  now  —  March,  1863.  Helene  had 
just  had  a  birthday,  which  Lassalle  had  remem- 
bered with  violets  and  rosebuds  and  a  poem. 
When  the  summer  came,  he  was,  as  if  accident- 
ally, to  make  the  acquaintance  of  Helene's 
parents,  and  rely  on  his  conquering  charm  to 
win  them  round. 

When  the  summer  did  come,  Helene  was 
busily  nursing  her  grandmother,  who  remained 
ill  all  the  rest  of  the  year,  and  died  early  in  the 
winter;  and,  also  in  that  summer,  with  that 
culpably  frivolous  vacillation  which  character- 
ized her  throughout,  she  had,  strangely  enough, 
formally  betrothed  herself  to  Yanko  von  Raco- 
witza.  After  the  grandmother's  death,  Helene 
[137] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
returned  with  her  mother  to  Geneva, 
where  the  family  now  hved,  Ilerr  von 
Donniges  having  been  appointed  charge 
d'affaires  at  Berne.  In  March,  1864, 
Yanko  joined  them,  and,  with  his  pleasant 
ways  and  various  social  accomplishments, 
won  himself  into  the  good  graces  of  Herr 
von  Donniges  and  the  whole  family 
circle. 

In  May,  Helene  fell  ill  with  a  fever,  and 
on  her  convalescence,  still  being  weak  and 
nervous,  she  was  sent  by  her  doctor  to  a 
mountain  resort  near  Berne,  where  she 
lived  with  some  English  and  American 
friends. 

Meanwhile,  Lassalle  had  been  working 
like  a  giant,  fighting  lawsuits  with  which 
the  government  vainly  attempted  to  para- 
lyze his  political  activity,  founding  his 
great  Working  Men's  Society,  and  mak- 
ing an  almost  regal  campaign  through 
the  country,  punctuated  with  daring 
speeches  and  wild  popular  enthusiasm. 
For  one  of  these  speeches  he  was  sen- 


Lassalk  and  Helene  von  Dormiges 
tenced  to  a  year's  imprisonment,  which 
his  brilHant  appeal  succeeded  in  reduc- 
ing to  six  months.  Pending  his  imprison- 
ment, however,  feehng  the  need  of  rest 
after  the  long  strain  upon  his  energies,  he 
sought  his  favorite  retreat,  Rigi-Kaltbad, 
in  Switzerland. 

He  had  been  there  a  few  days,  when, 
one  afternoon  —  the  afternoon  of  July 
25,  1864  —  while  he  was  busy  on  his  cor- 
respondence with  his  political  colleagues, 
a  message  was  brought  to  him  that  a  lady 
wished  to  see  him.  It  was  Helene.  She 
had  ridden  up  the  mountain  with  her  two 
lady  friends,  having  heard  from  the 
friendly  Holthoff  that  Lassalle  was  stay- 
ing there. 

Lassalle  proceeded  with  the  party  to 
Rigi-Kulm,  where  they  were  to  spend  the 
night  and  see  the  sunrise.  But  they  were 
to  be  disappointed  of  their  sunrise  by  a 
fog.  *'  How  often,"  Helene  writes  in  her 
subsequent  reminiscences,  "  when  in  later 
years  I  have  stood  upon  the  summit  of 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Rigi,  and  seen  the  day  break  in  all  its  splendour, 
have  I  recalled  this  foggy,  damp  morning,  and 
Lassalle's  disappointment." 

On  this  occasion,  they  discussed  their  future 
more  seriously  than  ever  before,  and  though 
Helene  still  pleaded  for  further  compromise  in- 
stead of  an  immediate  marriage,  which  Lassalle 
strongly  urged  as  their  wisest  course,  she  seems 
on  this  occasion  to  have  been  braced  by  contact 
with  his  strong  spirit  into  a  mood  of  firmness 
which  promised  him  loyalty  against  whatever 
opposition.  They  parted,  elate  and  confident 
in  the  power  of  their  love  to  win  their  battle. 

At  every  stage  of  her  journey,  the  post  and  the 
telegraph  brought  her  fiery  and  tender  messages 
from  her  lover,  and  three  days  later  Lassalle  him- 
self followed  her  to  Wabern.  Meanwliile,  she 
had  written  him  a  passionate  letter  in  which  she 
solemnly  promised  to  become  his  wife,  whatever 
difficulties  might  stand  in  their  way. 

"  You  said  to  me  yesterday :  '  Say  but  a  sensible 

and  decided  "yes!"  —  et  je  me  charge  du  resfe. 

Good:  I  say  "yes"  —  chargez  vons  done  du  reste. 

I  only  require  that  we  first  do  all  in  our  power  to 

[140] 


Lassalle  and  Helene  von  Donniges 
win  my  parents  to  a  friendly  attitude.  To  me 
belongs,  however,  a  painful  task.  I  must  slay  in 
cold  blood  the  true  heart  of  Yanko  von  Raco- 
witza,  who  has  given  me  the  purest  love,  the 
noblest  devotion.  With  heartless  egotism  I  must 
destroy  the  day-dream  of  a  noble  youth.  But, 
for  your  sake,  I  will  even  do  what  is  wrong." 

For  eight  days,  Lassalle  and  Helene  were  at 
Wabern  together  —  eight  days  of  happy,  unin- 
terrupted companionship  —  in  which,  as  they 
learnt  more  and  more  of  each  other,  every  moment 
taught  them  how  unerring  had  been  their  first 
swift  sense  of  their  instinctive  affinity.  In  Helene 
Lassalle  found  that  exquisitely  matched  wife  of 
heart  and  l^rain,  of  spirit  and  sense,  who  is  the 
dream  of  every  man  of  genius  —  a  dream  not 
fulfilled  once  in  a  hundred  years;  and  in  Lassalle 
Helene  had  found  her  "eagle  of  men,"  that 
dominating,  strong  lord  of  her  hfe,  who  was  her 
dream,  as  he  is  the  dream  of  every  woman,  but 
of  whose  existence  her  girl's  career  of  easy  con- 
quest had  made  her  somewhat  confidently  skep- 
tical. Life  seldom  brings  together  two  human 
beings  so  absolutely  mated,  so  surely  born  for 
[141] 


.J^^r^/'^- 


y 


I- 


i 


1 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
each  other.  It  was  elated  with  a  very 
solemn  sense  of  this  union  that  Helene 
and  Lassalle  bade  each  other  good-by 
at  Wabern  station  on  the  morning  of 
August  3,  1864.  Helene  was  due  at 
Geneva  at  two  o'clock,  Lassalle  was  to 
follow  by  a  later  train.  "Here  end  my 
happy  memories,"  is  Helene's  sigh  in 
her  record  of  this  time.  Neither  indeed 
could  have  thought  that  before  August 
had  ended  Lassalle  would  have  done 
wdth  work  and  dreams,  and  that  the 
rooms  of  the  Working  Men's  Society  in 
Dusseldorf,  as  he  had  strangely  prophe- 
sied, would  be  "hung  in  black." 

Helene  found  her  family  in  festival 
spirits,  and  her  mother  in  an  unwonted 
mood  of  tenderness,  owing  to  the  recent 
betrothal  of  her  sister  Margaretha  to 
Count  Kayserling.  Alas !  this  rare  genial- 
ity not  unnaturally  prompted  Helene  to 
take  a  false  step  against  which  Lassalle 
had  specifically  warned  her.  She  con- 
fided in  her  seldom-softened  mother  — 


Lassalle  and  HcJcjie  vo?i    'Domuges 

with  the  result  that,  as  with  the  advent 
of  some  wicked  fairy,  all  the  merriment 
suddenly  fled  with  shrieking,  and  with 
horror-lifted  hands.  An  alliance  with 
that  unspeakable  Jew,  that  shameless 
demagogue!  Why,  the  mere  thought  of 
it  was  enough  to  frighten  away  the  ar- 
duously captured  count !  How  could  she, 
abandoned  girl,  ruin  her  sister's  pros- 
pects, and  smirch  the  social  record  of  the 
whole  family!  The  father,  called  to  the 
rescue,  made  a  terrifying  scene,  heaped 
filthy  slanders  on  Lassalle's  name,  and 
forbade  Helene  to  leave  the  house. 

The  battle  had  now  begun  in  real 
earnest,  and  her  father's  violence  finally 
awakened  Helene  to  the  radical  impos- 
sibility of  her  dreams  of  peaceable  com- 
promise. Lassalle  was  right.  There  was 
only  one  way,  and  here  Helene  rose 
strongly  to  the  situation,  and  acted  with 
instant  resolution  and  courage.  Lassalle 
was  to  have  left  Wabern  for  Geneva  by 
a  train  starting  a  few  hours  later  than 


jl^K' 


i 


Old  hove  Stof'ies  Retold 
Helene's,  and  on  raising  the  storm  at  home,  but 
before  her  father's  interference,  she  had  imme- 
diately despatched  a  letter  l)y  her  maid  to  meet 
him  on  his  arrival.  Her  father's  treatment,  how- 
ever, decided  her  to  leave  home  instantly,  and, 
once  for  all,  to  unite  her  life  with  Lassalle's. 
Slipping  some  money  and  a  small  dagger  into 
her  pocket,  she  managed  to  escape  from  the 
house  unobserved,  and  arrived  at  Lassalle's  hotel 
just  as  he  was  reading  her  letter.  He  received 
her  somewhat  sternly,  reproaching  her  for  having 
disobeyed  him  by  the  confidence  in  her  mother; 
and,  to  her  intense  astonishment  and  disappoint- 
ment, refused  to  go  away  with  her,  though  he 
himself,  during  the  days  they  had  just  spent  to- 
gether, had  pleaded  so  forcibly  for  that  very 
course.  He  insisted  that  she  should  return  home, 
and  leave  him  to  win  her  from  her  parents  —  a 
feat  which,  with  liis  sul^lime  confidence  in  him- 
self, he  was  sure  of  accomplishing.  Helene,  still 
vibrating  with  the  scene  she  had  just  gone  through, 
and  too  truly  measuring  the  force  of  the  resistance 
to  be  encountered,  endeavoured  to  convince  Las- 
salle  of  the  utter  hopelessness  of  his  attempt,  and 
[144] 


Lass  a  lie  a?  id  Heleiie  von  Dhinlgcs 
besought  him  with  tears  to  take  advantage  of  the 
nioment. 

But,  alas,  Lassalle's  fighting-blood  was  up, 
and  his  haughty  pride  on  its  mettle.  Arrogantly 
sure  of  his  strength,  fatally  underestimating  the 
task  before  him,  he  remained  obdurate,  and 
presently  escorted  Helene  to  the  house  of  a  lady 
who  was  not  only  Helene's  own  friend,  but  a 
friend,  too,  of  the  family.  They  had  hardly  ar- 
rived there  when  Helene's  mother  and  sister  also 
arrived.  Lassalle  declared  the  meeting  most 
opportune,  and  immediately  applied  all  his  fa- 
mous resources  of  persuasive  eloquence  to  the 
situation,  only  to  prove  how  right  Helene's  judg- 
ment had  been.  Lassalle's  usually  victorious 
arts  were  not  only  utterly  wasted  on  Frau  von 
Donniges,  but  that  lady  assailed  and  insulted 
him  in  the  most  violent  and  contemptuous  fashion. 
Helene,  thus  more  than  ever  confirmed  in  her 
foresight,  again  begged  him,  in  her  mother's 
presence,  to  take  her  away  with  him,  but  alas! 
the  gods  had  already  bound  his  eyes  for  the  stroke 
of  his  doom,  and  he  paid  no  heed.  Though  Frau 
von  Donniges  insolently  told  him  that,  should  he 
[  145  ] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
attempt  to  call  on  her  husband,  the  ser- 
vants would  throw  him  out  of  the  house, 
and  that,  should  he  write,  his  letters  would 
be  returned  unopened,  he  still  maintained 
a  pacificatory  attitude  of  punctilious 
courtesy,  and  still  insisted  on  surrender- 
ing Helene  to  the  care  of  such  a  mother, 
with  a  fanatical  gallantry  which  was  no 
doubt  very  satisfying  to  his  pride,  but 
which  was  certainly  most  disastrously 
ill-timed.  Helene's  eagle  among  men 
had  indeed  made  a  very  unaquiline  mis- 
take. Here,  if  ever,  was  his  moment  to 
swoop  and  carry  the  white  lamb  of  the 
house  of  von  Donniges  safe  to  his  un- 
scalable eyrie.  But  no!  he  chose  instead 
to  pose  picturesquely  in  an  attitude  of 
nobly  surrendering  a  prey  which  it  was 
obviously  in  his  power  any  moment  to 
recapture.  Nothing,  indeed,  would  sat- 
isfy his  aquiline  pride  but  that  the  family 
which  had  dared  thus  to  scorn  him  should 
beg  him  upon  its  knees  to  do  it  the  honour 
of  flying  away  with  one  of  its  daughters! 


Lassalle  a?id  Helen  vo?i  Dofmiges 
The  image  does  indeed  not  unfairly  repre- 
sent the  hopelessness  of  the  demands  of 
his  pride.     There  was  to  be  a  conflict  of 
wills.     His  could  not  fail  to  be  the  stronger. 

"  I  give  you  back  your  child,"  said  he, 
magnificently,  to  Frau  von  Donniges. 
*'  Listen  to  me.  I,  who  can  do  with  your 
daughter  what  I  wish,  resign  her  to  your 
care,  but  only  for  a  short  time.  She  goes 
with  you  because  I  wish  her  to ;  never  for- 
get that.     And  now,  farewell!" 

Then,  turning  to  Helene,  and  tenderly 
embracing  her,  he  said :  "  Farewell,  for  a 
little  while!  What  you  are  doing  for  me 
now,  I  will  never  forget.  I  can  never 
thank  you  enough  for  your  compliance. 
I  require  nothing  more  from  your  will, 
your  strength.  I  know  this  is  much  to 
ask;  all  the  rest  is  my  affair.  Do  not 
allow  yourself  to  be  maltreated;  otherwise, 
submit  to  what  is  required  of  you.  I 
shall  know  all  that  happens,  and  on  the 
slightest  ill-treatment,  I  will  take  you 
away  at  once:  in  any  case,  they  shall  not 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
keep  you  long.     Resign  yourself  for  a  short  time 
to  their  will;  mine  is  stronger;  we  shall  conquer 
at  last.     And  now,  good-hy  for  a  little  while." 

It  was  magnificent,  but,  indeed,  it  was  not  war; 
and  what  Lassalle  failed  to  see  was  that  the  pride 
which  thus  prompted  him  so  desperately  to  hazard 
not  only  his  own  but  also  Helene's  happiness  was 
in  its  essence  as  bourgeois  as  the  pride  he  was 
fighting,  was  indeed  identical.  All  that  he  could 
hope  to  accomplish  was  the  wresting  of  an  empty 
formality  from  a  society  whose  conventions  both 
himself  and  Helene  professed  to  despise,  a  sanc- 
tion gained  at  the  sword's  point  of  which  neither 
felt  any  need,  an  authority,  in  the  opinion  of  both, 
obsolete  and  ridiculous.  But  such  are  the  occa- 
sional paradoxes  of  the  revolutionary. 

Can  we  wonder  if  in  Helene's  eyes  her  eagle 
moulted  some  feathers  for  this  unlooked-for 
action,  and  that  her  love  was  set  a-thinking  .^ 
Could  he  really  love  her  and  act  so  .^  and  if  in- 
deed he  loved  her,  her  brain  told  her  that  he  had 
made  a  mistake  at  a  critical  moment.  Eagles 
among  men  should  never  make  mistakes.  Pos- 
sibly, too,  her  fine,  feminine  sense  found  some- 

ru8i 


Ferdinand  Lassalle 


Lassalle  and  Hclcne  von  Ddn?iiges 
thing  underbred  in  this  anxious  assertion  of  pride 
in  a  situation  where  a  truer  pride  wouhl  have 
disdained  to  measure  itself  with  such  vulgar 
standards.  Some  such  half-formed  thoughts 
may  well  have  worked  in  Helene's  mind,  and  con- 
tributed to  the  slackening  of  a  will  all  too  suscep- 
tible to  varying  influences  and  changes  of  mood; 
and  soon  she  was  to  be  a  prisoner,  cut  off  from 
the  spiritual  fount  of  her  being,  and  instead  daily 
and  hourly  breathing  an  atmosphere  of  her  own 
doubts  and  her  father's  lies. 

Herr  von  Donniges  was  an  opponent  whose 
obstinacy  and  resource  Lassalle  had  not  counted 
with,  and  whose  brutal  and  unscrupulous  methods 
he  could  not  have  been  expected  to  conceive.  An 
ordinarily  severe  parent  Lassalle  might  well  have 
considered  himself  a  match  for;  but  Herr  von 
Donniges  was  to  display  a  barbarity,  a  ferocity, 
of  disapproval  which  one  does  not  expect  to  en- 
counter in  a  modern  parent,  however  tyrannical, 
and  he  at  once  set  about  the  subjugation  of  his 
disobedient  daughter  in  the  thoroughgoing  spirit 
of  a  medieval  baron.  Lassalle  had  hardly  left 
the  house  before  this  terrific  parent  appeared, 
[149] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
hatless,  so  to  speak,  with  rage,  and  with 
a  hirge  knife  in  his  hand.  Seizing 
Helene  by  the  hair,  he  dragged  her  home, 
and  locked  her  in  her  room,  the  window 
of  which  he  nailed  up  with  his  own  hand. 
Here  she  was  kept  close  prisoner,  her 
food  was  pushed  in  at  the  door, 
without  her  seeing  who  brought  it, 
and  her  father  threatened  to  shoot  any 
one  who  should  hold  communication 
with  her,  or  act  as  go-between  for 
her  and  Lassalle.  At  short  intervals, 
he  would  come,  and  ask  her  decision, 
always  receiving  the  answer:  *'I  shall 
marry   Lassalle." 

Had  Helene  continued  steadfast  as 
she  thus  began,  and  opposed  her  father's 
bugaboo  methods  with  quiet  determina- 
tion, the  story  could  only  have  ended 
one  way.  Disquieting  and  even  alarm- 
ing as  Herr  von  Donniges'  fury  might 
be,  her  common  sense  might  have  told 
her  that  it  was  mainly  stage  thunder,  and 
that  there  was  really  nothing  to  fear,  so 


Lassalle  a?id  Helene  vo?i  Dojiniges 
long  as  she  and  Lassalle  remained  true 
to  each  other. 

After  all,  she  was  not  really  living  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  her  father  knew 
quite  well  that  he  could  only  fulfil  his 
threats  at  the  risk  of  his  public  position. 
Here  was  Lassalle's  point  of  vantage,  and 
he  lost  no  time  in  setting  in  motion  the 
high  forces  at  his  disposal  —  for,  revolu- 
tionary though  he  was,  he  was  not  with- 
out powerful  friends. 

That  he  would  have  fulfilled  his  boast, 
and  forced  Herr  von  Donniges  to  restore 
his  daughter's  freedom,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  Alas!  it  was  Helene  herself  who 
had  made  his  spirited  tactics  of  no  avail. 
Space  does  not  permit  of  my  following, 
step  by  step,  the  development  of  a  struggle 
to  which  Herr  von  Donniges  presently 
brought  not  only  violence  but  brilliant, 
unscrupulous  cunning.  On  the  side  of 
the  lovers  it  is  a  heartbreaking  tragedy  of 
errors  and  misunderstandings,  compli- 
cated, too,  with  such  cross-purposes  as 

151 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

those  of  the  Countess  Hatzfeldt,  whose  jealousy  of 

Helene  is  clearly  seen  to  have  been  one  of  the  cruel 

threads  in  the  fatal  web.     Of  course,  the  greatest 

danger  of  all  in  such  a  situation  is  that  the  lovers, 

cut   off   from    direct    communication,    may    lose 

faith  in  each  other.     At  the  best,  love  is  a  feeling 

childishly    sensitive    to    doubts    and    fears.     For 

the  truest   lovers   separation   is  full   of    anxious 

disquiet.     Time    and    Distance    are   evil    fairies. 

They  have   been   known   to   work   sad   mischief 

with    the    greatest    passions.     Who    would    dare 

answer  for  the  love  of   another  across  say  a  year 

of  separation  and  silence  ? 

"  Canst  thou  be  true  across  so  many  miles  — • 
So  many  days  that  keep  us  still  apart  ?  " 

What  lover  would  dare  to  answer  the  question 
to  his  own  heart  with  an  affirmative  ? 

Had  Helene  but  kept  her  lover's  parting 
words  in  mind,  and  done  nothing  but  sit 
firm  in  quiet  determination,  awaiting  her  cer- 
tain deliverance,  all  would  have  been  well;  but, 
unfortunately,  the  fibres  of  her  will  all  too  soon 
relaxed;  and,  whatever  she  still  felt  in  her  heart, 
the  threats  of  her  father  and  the  entreaties  of  her 
[152] 


Lassalle  and  Helene  von  Donniges 

sisters  presently  liiid  their  way  with  her.  Not 
only  did  she  promise  to  give  up  Lassalle,  but  she 
set  her  name  to  letters  to  family  friends  announ- 
cing that  determination,  letters  which  her  father 
had  written  for  her  to  sign.  She  has  pleaded 
intimidation  as  an  excuse  for  this;  but,  even  when 
the  opportunity  was  given  to  her  of  free  speech 
with  one  of  Lassalle's  most  pow^erful  ambassa- 
dors. Colonel  Riistow,  and  of  transmitting  through 
him  a  letter  to  Lassalle,  she  used  it  coldly  to 
repudiate  her  lover.  Herr  von  Donniges, 
with  the  specious  diplomacy  which  char- 
acterized his  clever  management  of  the  af- 
fair at  this  stage,  had  sought  an  interview 
with  Colonel  Riistow,  for  the  purpose  of 
convincing  him  that  Helene  was  acting  with 
her  own  free-will.  Asked  if  Helene  might 
receive  and  read  for  herself  a  letter  from 
Lassalle,  Herr  von  Donniges  promptly  agreed, 
and  Helene,  entering  the  room,  left  it  to  read 
her  letter.  Soon  she  returned,  and  without 
a  trace  of  emotion  said  to  Colonel  Riistow  as  she 
handed  him  a  note:  "Tell  Herr  Lassalle  that  I 
have  read  his  letter;  but  it  makes  no  difference 
[153] 


Old  Love  Stot'ies  Retold 
as  regards  the   contents    of    the    note    I 
have  just  given  you  for  him." 
This  was  the  note: 

"  Herr  Lassalle  :  — 

"Having  with  all  sincerity  and  with 
the  deepest  regret  acknowledged  my 
fault  to  my  betrothed  bridegroom,  Yanko 
von  Racowitza,  and  been  comforted  by 
his  forgiveness  and  the  assurance  of  his 
unchanged  affection;  having  also  in- 
formed your  friend  Holthoff  of  my  de- 
cision before  receiving  his  letter  advising 
me  to  give  you  up,  I  now  declare  to  you, 
of  my  own  free-will,  that  a  union  with 
you  is  not  to  be  thought  of,  that  I  con- 
sider myself  released  from  my  engage- 
ment to  you,  and  that  I  am  determined 
to  devote  my  future  life  to  my  betrothed 
husband  in  true  and  faithful  love. 

"Helene  vox  DOXXIGES." 


Though  this  may  well  have  shaken 
Lassalle 's  faith  in  Helene,  he  refused  to 
believe  that  it  was  written  of  her  own 


Lassal/c  and  Helene  vo?i  T)onniges 

free-will  —  and,  in  fact,  according  to 
Helene's  own  statement  later,  the  whole 
scene  had  been  carefully  planned  by  her 
father  for  the  purpose  of  impressing 
Colonel  Rlistow.  He  himself  had  dic- 
tated the  letter,  and  made  her  promise 
that  in  the  event  of  Colonel  Rustow  bring- 
ing a  letter  from  Lassalle,  she  was  to 
leave  the  room,  give  it  unread  into  the 
hands  of  Yanko  von  Racowitza,  and  re- 
turn, after  a  proper  interval,  with  the 
previously  prepared  note.  We  cannot 
but  feel  that  a  nature  so  easily  dominated 
was,  after  all,  no  true  mate  for  Lassalle. 
A  similar  scene  a  few  days  later,  still 
more  diabolically  conceived  and  callously 
acted,  proved  even  too  much  for  Lassalle's 
stubborn  faith  in  her  loyalty.  Her  letter 
had  only  moved  him  to  fresh  efforts.  He 
had  come  so  far  as  to  win  the  assistance 
of  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in 
Munich,  who  authorized  an  advocate, 
Doctor  Haenle,  to  endeavor  to  arrange 
the  affair  amicably  with  Herr  von  Don- 

155 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
niges,  and,  if  that  proved  impossible,  to  summon 
Helene  before  a  notary  to  declare  her  decision  in 
Lassalle's  presence,  and  away  from  her  father's 
influence.  So  little,  for  all  her  father's  medieval 
methods,  was  there  any  need  for  Helene  to  fear 
them.  She  had  not  only  Lassalle,  but  the  law 
on  her  side  —  and  yet,  w  ill  it  be  believed,  she 
declined  in  the  presence  of  Doctor  Haenle  and 
Colonel  Rlistow  the  proffered  chance  of  freedom. 
She  would  not  go  before  a  notary,  and  refused 
to  meet  Lassalle. 

"  What  good  would  it  do  1^ "  she  said.  *'  I  know 
what  he  wants  to  say,  and  I  am  tired  of  the 
whole  business." 

In  addition,  she  spoke  with  incredible  levity 
of  Lassalle:  "Lassalle  likes  to  talk;  he  would 
scarcely  get  through  what  he  has  to  say  in  two 
hours,"  —  and  generally  conducted  the  inter- 
view with  such  heartless  frivolity  that  no  wonder 
Lassalle's  ambassadors  w^ent  back  to  their  friend, 
convinced  that  a  woman  who  could  talk  so  was 
utterly  unworthy  of  him.  And,  certainly,  though 
Helene  was  acting  once  more  under  intimidation, 
and,  as  she  afterward  explained,  from  a  misunder- 
[156  ] 


Lassalle  and  Helene  von  Dhmigcs 
standing  of  Rustow's  and  Haenle's  relations  to 
Lassalle  (for  her  father  kept  her  throughout 
ignorant  of  the  chances  in  her  favor,  and  she 
feared  "  false  friends "  of  Lassalle  among  the 
dangers  that  surrounded  her),  yet  it  was  surely 
unnecessary  to  play  her  part  with  such  sincerity. 

Can  we  wonder  that  Lassalle's  faith  in  Helene 
was  unequal  to  this  cruel  blow  ?  At  last  he  must 
agree  with  his  friends.  She  was  not  worth  the 
struggle. 

"I  have  given  up  the  aifair,"  he  telegraphed 
Richard  Wagner,  who  had  stood  his  friend 
throughout,  "on  account  of  the  utter  unworthi- 
ness  of  the  person.  But  thanks  for  kind  inten- 
tions.    Do  nothing  more.     Lassalle." 

So  he  advised  his  other  friends;  and  then,  in 
his  natural  anger,  he  sent  the  following  challenge 
to  Helene's  father: 

"  Herr  von  Donniges  :  — 

*'  Having  learned  through  the  report  of  Colonel 

Riistow  and  Doctor  Haenle  that  your  daughter 

is  a  shameless  hussy,   and  having  therefore  no 

intentions    of    dishonouring  myself  by  marrying 

[157] 


Old  hove  Stories  Retold 
her,  there  is  no  longer  any  reason  for 
withhokling  a  demand  for  satisfaction  on 
account  of  the  various  insults  which  you 
have  offered  me.  I  therefore  request 
you  to  make  the  necessary  arrangements 
for  a  duel  with  my  two  friends  })y  whom 


I  send  this  message. 


F.  Lassalle." 


And  it  had  been  one  of  Lassalle's  cardinal 
principles  never,  under  any  circum- 
stances, to  fight  a  duel!  So  had  love 
enervated  the  strong  thinker. 

Herr  von  Donniges  refused  to  fight, 
and  fled  to  Berne,  but  young  Racowitza 
took  on  him  to  defend  the  family  honour. 
Lassalle  was  known  to  be  a  fine  shot, 
and  Helene  has  since  told  us  how  she 
looked  on  Racowitza  as  already  dead. 
She  had  already  pictured  his  being  car- 
ried to  her  home,  and  planned  that  in 
the  confusion  that  would  ensue  she  would 
steal  out  of  the  house  —  to  Lassalle. 
Such  was  her  weak  and  wdtless  depend- 


._J 


Lassallc  cuid  Hcloic  vo?i  Donniges 

ence  on  circumstances.  But  the  issue 
was  to  be  otherwise.  At  the  first  ex- 
chanoje  of  shots,  I^assallc  was  fatally 
wounded ;  and  he  died  two  days  later  — 
August  31,  1864  —  aged  thirty-nine  years 
and  five  months.  He  is  buried  in  the 
Jewish  cemetery  at  Breslau,  and  on  the 
headstone  is  this  short  epitaph: 

"Here  rests  what  was  mortal  of 
Ferdinand  Lassalle, 
Thinker  and  Fighter." 

So  a  weak  woman  and  a  tyrannical 
father  had  })rouo-ht  to  nothino;  one  of  the 
strongest  personalities  and  the  most  valu- 
able intellects  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
So  ended  that  stormy,  starry  wooing  of 
that  night  in  May;  and  surely  there  never 
was  a  story  filled  with  more  cruel  reading, 
with  so  much  pitiful  matter  of  wantonly 
tangled  complication,  and,  it  would  seem, 
easily  avoidable  tragic  mistakes.  Cer- 
tainly no  story  in  the  history  of  love  more 
terribly  illustrates  the  mad  and  criminal 
folly  of  arbitrary  interference  with  that 


^ 


Shasta 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
elemental  instinct  of  liuman  hearts.  For  not 
even  Herr  von  Donniges  achieved  his  end.  The 
disgrace  he  feared  came  upon  him  tenfold.  His 
daugliter  left  him.  Racowitza  died  a  year  or 
two  after  —  though  Helene  had  once  more  illus- 
trated her  curious  nature  by  becoming  his  wife. 
The  Countess  Hatzfeldt  was  heartbroken.  Not 
a  single  actor  in  the  story  was  happy  —  and  all 
because  society,  in  the  person  of  Herr  von  Don- 
niges, wickedly,  cruelly  insisted  on  putting 
asunder  two  whom  Nature  had  so  manifestly 
joined  together. 

Such  is  the  revenge  of  a  thwarted  natural  force 
—  and  such  is  the  lesson  society  seems  eternally 
incapable  of  learning. 


[160] 


VIII 

Abelard  and  Heloise 

r 

"^  I  ^HERE  lived  in  Paris  a  young  girl  named 
J^  Heloise."  So  Abelard  in  his  autobio- 
graphical letter  to  an  unknown,  and  possibly 
hypothetical  friend,  tells  in  one  sentence,  more 
eloquent  even  than  his  wonted  eloquence 
of  the  schools,  a  whole  history.  He  wrote  in 
Latin,  but  it  sounds  prettier  in  his  own  lan- 
guage, as  most  things  are  apt  to  sound  in 
French:  "//  existait  a  Paris  line  jenne  fille 
nommee  Heloise y  x\h  me!  what  long-lost  joy, 
what  ancient  heart-break,  are  contained  in  that 
simple  statement. 

Yet  all  would  have  been  well  —  or  not  so  well ! 
—  if  there  had  not  also  lived  in  Paris  at  the  same 
time  a  certain  brilliant  teacher  of  philosophy 
named  Peter  Abelard. 

The  year  was  1118  and  Abelard  not  only  lived 
in  Paris,  but  in  a  real  sense  may  almost  be  said 
[1611 


i 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 

to  have  been  one  of  its  makers.     As  the 

walls    of    Thel)es    rose    to    music,  Paris 

biiilded  itself  to    the   music   of  Abelard's 

tongue:  for  on   his     lips,    indeed,    of     all 

men,    philosophy  was  not 

"  Harsh  and  crabbed,  as  (hill  fools  suppose, 
But  musical  as  in  Apollo's  lute." 

Think  of  the  wonder  of  the  teacher  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  wonder  of  the 
student  thirst  for  knowledge  on  the  other, 
that  between  them  could  build  a  city  — 
all  out  of  enchanting  speech  and  en- 
chanted hearing.  For  Paris  literally  be- 
gan that  way.  So  many  scholars  flocked 
from  all  parts  of  Europe  to  listen  to  that 
nig;htino;ale  of  knowledo^e,  that  Paris,  a 
mere  embryo  city  when  Abelard  first 
came  there,  had  to  grow  bigger  and 
bigger  to  hold  them.  It  seems  fitting 
that  our  modern  Alexandria  should  have 
been  made  out  of  learning  and  a  love  story. 
Abelard  was  a  young  nobleman  from 
Pallet  in  Brittany,  of  an  old  family,  and 
with  much  confidence  in  himself.   Though 


Abelard  and  Heloise 
the  eldest  son  of  his  father,  a  man  of  con- 
sideral)le  euUiire  for  his  day,  he  early  chose 
for  himself  the  wandering  pilgrimage  of 
the  scholar  rather  than  that  military  way 
of  life  most  affected  hy  young  men  of  his 
class.  Wherever  the  reputation  of  some 
famous  teacher  drew  him,  he  rambled, 
and  of  all  his  teachers,  Jean  Roscelin, 
Canon  of  Compiegne,  was  probably  the 
earliest,  as  he  was  certainly  the  most  in- 
fluential. From  him  it  may  well  be  that 
Abelard's  natural  bent  towards  taking  the 
common-sense  rationalistic  view  of  the  hair- 
splitting scholastic  controversies  of  his  day 
gained  strength  and  direction ;  for  Roscelin 
was  a  well-known  champion  of  freedom  of 
thought,  and  looked  upon  as  anything  but 
50und  on  the  question  of  the  Trinity. 

With  a  rationalistic  temper  of  mind 
thus  already  well-formed,  Abelard  at 
length  arrived  in  Paris,  and  put  himself 
under  the  teaching  of  a  scholar  of  a  very  dif- 
ferent type,  the  famous  William  of  Cham- 

laux,  a  brilliant    pillar    of    orthodox-^ 


163 


■m 


^i^/fc'^'*"^ 


0^ 


^ 


"d 


k 


Si^-^-.-^^^ 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
A  certain  philosophic  controversy  of  supreme 
importance  then,  of  supreme  unimportance  now, 
was  agitating  the  learned  world.  We  needn't 
pause  even  to  state  what  it  was.  All  that  con- 
cerns us  is  that  William  of  Champeaux  cham- 
pioned the  orthodox,  logic-chopping  side  of  the 
controversy,  and  that  Abelard,  by  a  sudden  flash 
of  his  radiant  common  sense,  won  such  a  victory 
for  the  other  side  that  the  authority  of  his  teacher 
was  disastrously  impaired,  and  his  own  reputation 
as  a  daring  thinker  and  subtle  dialectician  made 
with  a  single  blow. 

Abelard's  success  decided  him  to  open  a  school 
of  his  own,  and  at  Melun,  some  thirty  miles  from 
Paris,  and  presently  at  Corbeil,  he  began  to  draw 
the  world  of  wandering  scholars  to  his  chair. 
Suddenly  his  health  gave  way,  and  seven  years  of 
exile  in  his  country  home  followed.  ^leanwhile, 
William  of  Champeaux  had  delegated  his  chair 
to  a  substitute,  and  himself  retired  into  the  priory 
of  Saint  Victor.  In  his  retirement,  however,  he 
gave  lectures  on  rhetoric,  which  Abelard,  on  his 
return  to  Paris,  cynically  attended  —  to  the 
further    discomfiture    of    the    teacher.     So    the 

[  i«i  ] 


Abe  lard  a)  id  Heloise 
battle  between  the  rival  teachers  went  on.  With 
its  details  we  need  not  here  concern  ourselves. 
Suffice  it  that,  at  length,  in  the  year  1118,  after 
various  twists  and  turns  of  the  scholastic  conflict, 
Abelard  found  himself  firmly  seated  in  William 
of  Champeaux's  long-coveted  chair  of  the  Episco- 
pal school,  under  the  shadow  of  Notre  Dame. 
Soon  there  were  some  five  thousand  students,  a 
motley  picturesque  crowd  indeed,  thronging  Paris 
just  to  hear  Abelard  talk.  "It  has  been  esti- 
mated," says  his  most  recent  and  most  luminous 
biographer,  "  that  a  pope,  nineteen  cardinals,  and 
more  than  fifty  archbishops  and  bishops  w^ere  at 
one  time  among  his  pupils."  The  handsome, 
brilliant,  and  somewhat  worldly  young  teacher 
was  the  idol  of  the  city,  and  Heloise,  in  a  passage 
of  her  letters  pathetic  with  womanly  worship, 
recalls  how  the  women  used  to  run  to  see  him  as 
he  passed  from  his  lodging  on  the  hill  of  Ste. 
Genevieve  (now  the  Latin  Quarter  and  the  scene 
of  the  greatest  of  his  earlier  triumphs)  to  the 
schools.  "Who  was  there,"  she  cries,  "that  did 
not  hasten  to  observe  when  you  went  abroad, 
and  did  not  follow  you  with  strained  neck  and 
[105] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
staring  eyes  as  you  passed  along  ?    What 
wife,  what  virgin,  did  not  burn  ?      What 
queen  or  no})le  dame  did  not  envy  my 
fortune  ?  " 

In  1118  Abelard  was  in  his  thirty-ninth 
year,  and  at  the  height  of  his  fame.  The 
intoxication  of  fulfilled  ambition  and 
personal  popularity  was  his  daily  and 
hourly  drink.  W^ealth  as  well  as  fame 
was  his,  but  so  far  he  had  not  known 
love. 

Now  Abelard,  by  rumour  of  her  rare 
gifts  and  graces,  and  unusual  accom- 
plishments of  learning,  had  by  this  time 
become  aware  that  //  existait  a  Paris  line 
jeune  fille  nommee  Heloise,  and,  by  his 
own  confession,  he  presently  set  himself 
to  win  her  love.  Heloise  lived  with  her 
"  uncle  "  —  gossip  tongues  said  her  father 
—  Fulbert,  a  canon  of  Paris.  Abelard 
found  himself  in  need  of  a  new  lodging, 
and  Fulbert  was  glad  to  welcome  so  dis- 
tinguished a  boarder.  It  is  not  difficult 
to  imagine  the  excitement  in  the  heart  of 


Abelard  and  Heloise 
Heloise.  For  it  had  been  arranged  that 
Abelard  should  partly  repay  Fulbert  for 
his  hospitality  by  giving  various  learned 
lessons  to  his  niece.  Heloise  was  but 
seventeen  or  eighteen  —  so  much  a  child 
(though,  indeed,  she  had  been  brought 
up  by  the  somewhat  worldly  nuns  of 
Argenteuil  —  a  fact  not  to  be  forgotten  in 
Abelard's  defence)  that  her  guardian  gave 
x'Vbelard  permission  to  chastise  her  if  she 
neglected  her  lessons ! 

Neither  seem  to  have  entirely  neglected 
their  lessons,  for  it  is  probable  that  He- 
loise's  knowledge  of  Greek  and  Hebrew 
came  from  Abelard,  who  also  instructed 
her  in  theology  and  dialectics.  But  soon, 
as  with  Paolo  and  Francesca,  the  books 
were  forgotten,  and  Abelard  confesses  that 
before  long  there  were  "  more  kisses  than 
theses,"  and  that  "love  was  the  inspirer 
of  his  tongue."  Yet,  if  the  books  were 
temporarily  forgotten,  they  were  not 
merely  "love's  purveyors,"  for  this  love 
of  Abelard  and  Heloise  was  one  of  those 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
rare  loves  in  which  the  rapture  of  union  is  not 
merely  in  the  heart,  but  in  the  brain.  Each  could 
say  to  the  other,  as  Robert  Browning  wrote  to 
Elizabeth  Browning  —  "  Where  the  heart  is,  let 
the  brain  lie  also."  Theirs  was  that  keen,  com- 
plete love  which  unites  the  spirit  and  the  senses 
and  the  intellect  in  an  ecstasy  which  no  tongue, 
not  even  Abelard's,  can  tell. 

But,  if  A})elard  did  not  entirely  neglect  the 
mental  training  of  his  beloved  pupil,  she  was 
soon  the  only  pupil  to  whom  he  paid  any  regard; 
too  soon  his  love  for  her  so  completely  possessed 
him  that  he  half  forgot  his  lecture-room  and  the 
five  thousand  pilgrim  scholars,  and,  when  he 
did  lecture,  lectured  in  a  weary,  unprepared  fashion 
very  unlike  the  old  spirited  way  which  had  won 
him  his  fame.  But,  if  his  lectures  were  dis- 
appointing, there  were  soon  love  songs  of  his 
making  on  all  the  singing  lips  of  Paris;  and  every 
one  knew  what  and  who  it  was  that  had  wrought 
this  change  in  the  master.  Every  one,  for  a  long 
time,  except  —  Fulbert ;  and  then  at  last  Fulbert 
too.  With  Fulbert's  discovery  of  the  attach- 
ment, Abelard  and  Heloise  ceased  to  live  under 
[168] 


Abe  lard  and  Heloise 
the  same  roof.  The  happy  lessons  violently 
ceased,  and  the  lovers  might  only  meet  rarely 
and  with  difficulty.  As  usual,  however,  the 
guardian  had  made  his  discovery  too  late,  and 
there  came  a  day  when  Heloise  realized  that  she 
was  soon  to  become  a  mother,  and  wrote  telling 
Abelard  the  wonderful  news  —  "  with  transports 
of  joy."  It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  Heloise's 
attitude  in  presence  of  a  contingency  which  most 
women  would  naturally,  and  necessarily,  regard 
as  tragic,  as  it  is  characteristic  of  her  part  —  so 
much  the  nobler  part  —  in  the  whole  story. 
What  was  she  to  do  ?  she  asked.  Abelard' s 
answer  was  to  take  her  one  night,  during  Fulbert's 
absence,  to  his  home  at  Pallet,  where,  under  his 
sister's  care,  she,  in  due  course,  gave  birth  to  a 
boy,  to  whom  the  parents  gave  the  name  of 
"  Astrolabe  "  —  a  name  which  bears  curious  wit- 
ness to  that  love  of  learning  which  had  meant  so 
much  in  bringing  them  together. 

Fulbert's  rage  at  these  circumstances  may  be 

judged  too  well  from  his  subsequent  action.     To 

appease  it  Abelard  at  length  proposed  marriage 

with  Heloise,  though  it  is  impossible  to  say  that 

[1C9] 


old  Love  Stones  Retold 
the  form  of  his  proposal,  as  reported  by 
himself,  raises  liini  in  one's  esteem.  He 
had  done  notJiing,  he  urged,  that  need 
surprise  anyone  who  understood  the 
violence  of  love  and  knew  into  what 
abysses,  since  the  beginning  of  the  w^orld, 
women  had  hurled  the  greatest  of  men ! 

Remembering  his  own  earlier  state- 
ment that  he  had  deliberately  sought 
the  love  of  Heloise,  he  was  hardly  in  a 
position  to  make  this  oldest  and  meanest 
of  all  masculine  pleas  —  the  woman 
tempted  me!  Still,  he  was  willing  to 
make  a  reparation  which,  he  quaintly 
says,  went  beyond  anything  Fulbert 
could  have  hoped!  He  would  marry 
Heloise  —  on  condition  that  the  marriage 
w^as  kept  a  secret.  For,  you  see,  Heloise 
knew  but  one  love  —  the  love  of  Abelard ; 
Abelard  loved  two,  and  I  fear  that  for 
him  Ambition  was  the  greater  of  the  two. 
Think  of  a  man  who  loved  a  woman 
considering,  at  such  a  crisis  of  their  lives, 
and  at  a  moment  when  even  an  evident 


Abelard  and  Heloise 
duty  might  be  expected  to  appear  attrac- 
tive —  think  of  him  coldly  thinking  of  his 
"reputation."  "I  proposed  to  him,'* 
says  he,  "  to  marry  her  whom  I  had  se- 
duced, on  the  sole  condition  that  the  mar- 
riage was  to  be  kept  secret,  so  that  it 
should  not  injure  my  reputation!" 

If,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  love  of 
Dante  and  Beatrice  was  entirely  the  love 
of  Dante,  it  is  surely  equally  certain  that 
the  love  of  Abelard  and  Heloise  was 
mainly  the  love  of  Heloise.  It  is  a  hu- 
miliating comment  on  Abelard  to  hear  how 
differently  Heloise  took  the  situation. 
With  all  her  womanly  eloquence,  backed 
by  no  end  of  learned  authority,  she 
pleaded  with  him  —  not  to  marry  her ! 
What  odium  the  marriage  would  bring 
upon  the  Church.  What  tears  it  would 
cost  philosophy!  Think,  too,  how  de- 
plorable for  a  man  whom  nature  had 
created  for  the  whole  world  thus  to  be 
enslaved  by  a  woman  and  bent  under  a 
dishonourable  yoke! 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Reasoning  all  too  much  after  Abelard's  own 
heart !  —  but  all  the  same  the  marriage  really 
took  place.  Leaving  little  Astrolabe  with  Abe- 
lard's sister  at  Pallet,  the  two  lovers  returned  to 
Paris,  and  after  a  night  of  vigil  in  a  church,  were 
married,  on  a  certain  dawn,  in  presence  of  Fulbert 
and  many  friends  of  both  parties.  At  the  church 
door  they  separated,  Abelard  going  his  way, 
Heloise  hers.  For  the  world  was  not  to  know! 
However,  according  to  Abelard,  Fulbert  was 
determined  that  it  should  —  and  can  we  blame 
him !  —  and,  in  consequence  of  his  various  loud 
whispers,  Abelard  had  Heloise  secretly  conveyed 
to  her  old  convent  of  x\rgenteuil,  near  Paris, 
where,  without  taking  the  veil,  she  was  to  live  the 
life  of  a  nun. 

This  act  of  Abelard's  was  misunderstood, 
wilfully  maybe,  by  Fulbert,  who  professed  to 
regard  it  as  a  first  step  to  Abelard's  annulment 
of  the  marriage,  in  the  interests  of  his  ecclesiasti- 
cal ambitions  —  for  this  natural  enemy  of  priests 
and  priestly  sophistry  appears  really  to  have  had 
his  heart  set  upon  church  preferment,  after  all. 
Acting  on  this,  possible,  misconception,  Fulbert 
[172] 


Abelaj'd  and  Heloise 
took  his  terrible  historic  revenge  upon  Abelard; 
and  Abelard  and  Heloise  saw  each  other  no  more 
for  many  years.  Beside  himself  with  rage  and 
shame,  it  was  not  unnatural  that  Abelard  — 
selfish  as  it  actually  was  of  him  —  should  com- 
mand Heloise  to  consummate  her  uncompleted 
vows,  and  take  the  veil  in  earnest.  This  she  did, 
her  warm  human  heart  protesting,  as  it  still  re- 
mained warm  enough  to  protest  after  years  of 
monastic  life,  and,  who  can  doubt  that  reads  her 
wonderful  letters,  protested  to  the  end. 

Abelard's  life  in  the  long  interval  belongs  rather 
to  the  literature  of  theology  than  to  the  literature 
of  love.  Though  the  rich  human  spring  in  him 
which  had  given  that  worldly  charm  to  his  lec- 
tures, and  turned  a  philosopher  into  a  troubadour, 
was  for  ever  dried  up;  and  though,  indeed,  he 
was  soon  to  wither  to  an  asceticism  which  re- 
garded his  love  for  Heloise  as  a  sinful  lust  of  the 
flesh,  yet  his  head  retained  enough  of  its  vital 
originality  to  keep  him  still  and  always  a  pioneer 
of  honest  thinking,  and,  therefore,  a  rebel  in  the 
eyes  of  the  church.  To-day  iVbelard's  heresies 
have  become  a  part  of  official  Christian  doctrines, 

[  173  ] 


i 


} 


Old  hove  St07'ies  Retold 
as  is  the  way  with  any  heresies  whatso- 
ever; but  several  centuries  have  gone  by 
in  the  interval,  and  the  way  of  the  honest 
thinker  is  easier  to-day  —  if  he  is  careful 
to  choose  his  subjects!  Though  Abelard 
grew  more  and  more  of  an  ascetic 
moralist,  he  does  not  appear  to  have  lost 
his  courage  as  a  masculine  thinker,  and, 
as  long  as  he  lived,  he  was  ever  ready  to 
take  the  perilous  chances  of  truth.  This, 
necessarily,  made  his  life  eventful,  and 
even  stormy,  for  the  next  few  years,  and 
finally  drove  him  into  a  sort  of  exile, 
resulting  in  the  foundation  of  that  lonely 
little  monastery,  in  the  valley  of  Arduzon, 
the  name  of  which,  the  Paraclete,  is  so 
consecrated  to  romance.  Once  more 
the  old  miracle  of  his  silver  speech  took 
place.  Distant  and  almost  uninhabitable 
as  was  the  valley  where,  with  a  brother 
or  two,  he  had  taken  up  his  exile,  though, 
as  he  tells  us,  you  had  to  build  your 
rough  cabin  for  yourself,  and  had  to  be 
content  with  moss  and  mud  to  lie  on. 


Ahclard  and  Hcloise 
and  tlie  gnissy  bank  to  eat  from,  still  the 
pilgrim  audience  somehow  found  its  way, 
as  inevitably  the  sleuth-hounds  of  heresy 
found  theirs  also.  For  there  is  no  spot 
on  the  earth,  however  lonely,  where  it  is 
absolutely  safe  to  tell  the  truth.  It  was 
that  popular  and  industrious  Saint  Ber- 
nard of  Clairvaux  that  this  time  made 
things  uncomfortable  for  Abelard;  and 
with  that  usual  luck  of  his,  which  seemed 
to  make  every  change  in  his  life  for  the 
worse,  Abelard  accepted  an  invitation  to 
preside  over  the  Abbey  of  St.  Gildas  at 
Rhuys  in  Brittany.  The  Abbey  of  St. 
Gildas  was  rich  and  worldly,  and  it  is 
more  than  likely  that  the  good  monks  had 
been  attracted  to  x\belard  rather  by  the 
heterodoxy  of  his  reputation  than  by  his 
piety.  Their  disappointment  was  to  be 
keen  and  bitter,  for  how  different  was  this 
austere,  atrophied  Abelard  to  the  gay 
monk  of  the  world  they  had  looked  for- 
ward to  see.  Nor  were  they  long  in  ex- 
pressing     their      disappointment.     Soon 


Old  Love  Stot'ies  Retold 
they  were  violently  to  oppose  his  authority  and 
even  to  drop  poison  into  his  food. 

Abelard  had  been  abbot  of  Saint  Gildas  but 
three  or  four  years  when  news  came  to  him  that 
Heloise  was  in  trouble  too.  The  nuns  of  Ar- 
genteuil,  of  which  monastery  she  had  been  prioress, 
had  been  turned  out  of  their  home,  owing  more 
to  the  ecclesiastical  avarice  of  the  Abbot  Suger 
of  St.  Denis  —  who  fished  up  an  old  document 
to  prove  that  Argenteuil  really  belonged  to  the 
monastery  of  St.  Denis — than  to  the  probably  ex- 
aggerated accounts  of  the  worldliness  of  the  nuns. 
On  hearing  this  news,  Abelard  transferred  the 
Paraclete,  still  his  property,  into  Heloise's  keep- 
ing, and,  within  a  year  or  two,  the  nunnery  thus 
founded  became  one  of  the  most  famous  in  the 
kingdom,  respected,  and,  as  we  would  say, 
fashionable.  The  goodness  and  high-minded- 
ness  of  Heloise  are  as  apparent  in  her  success  as 
is  her  charm.  Nobles  and  prelates  smiled  gifts 
upon  her  little  abbey,  and  noble  ladies  anxious 
to  take  the  veil  thought  first  of  the  Paraclete. 
Well  might  a  world-weary,  perhaps  love-thwarted, 
girl  seek  out  siich  a  spiritual  mother;  for,  good 
[176] 


Abclard  and  Heloise 

and  pure  and  spiritual  as  Heloise  was,  her  letters 
tell  us  that  the  spring  of  an  undying  love  still 
kept  her  nature  sweet  and  sympathetic  to  the 
human  needs.  A  young  monk  seeking  Abelard 
would  indeed  have  made  no  such  happy  choice 
of  spiritual  director.  Ask  the  monks  of  St. 
Gildas !  These  perhaps  over-human  fathers  seem 
a't  length  to  have  so  violently  resisted  Abelard's 
stern  purpose  to  reform  them,  as  to  have  driven 
him  from  the  iVbbey  in  very  fear  for  his  life; 
though  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  the  midst 
of  all  these  various  "calamities"  of  which  pres- 
ently he  was  so  feelingly  to  write,  Abelard  still 
remained  Abbot  of  St.  Gildas,  and  enjoyed  an 
abbot's  revenue.  The  monks,  however,  found  it 
possible  still  to  make  his  life  a  burden,  and  his 
calumniators  were  not  slow  to  take  their  side 
against  him  One  day,  sick  at  heart,  and  ap- 
parently anxious  to  tell  his  own  truth  about  him- 
self, Abelard  sat  down  and  wrote  to  an  unknown 
friend  "The  Story  of  my  Calamities,"  a  document 
of  the  first  importance  to  our  understanding  of 
his  nature,  but  more  important  still,  because, 
accidentally  being  read  by  Heloise  in  her  quiet 
[177] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
nunnery,  it  prompted  her  to  write  the 
first  of  her  beautiful  heartfelt  letters: 
"To  her  lord,  yea,  father;  to  her  spouse, 
yea,  brother;  from  his  servant,  yea, 
daughter  —  his  wife,  his  sister;  to  Abe- 
lard  from  Heloise."  His  spiritual  daugh- 
ters, the  good  sisters  of  the  Paraclete, — 
"  they  who  have  given  themselves  to  God 
in  the  person  of  her  who  has  given  her- 
self exclusively  to  thee,"  —  were  alarmed 
to  hear  such  news  of  him,  and  begged 
that  he  would  write  to  ease  their  anxious 
hearts.  "A  letter  would  cost  thee  so 
little,"  cried  Heloise  reproachfully,  and 
quotes  Seneca  on  the  epistolary  duties 
of  friends.  In  the  interval  between 
Abelard's  making  over  the  Paraclete  to 
Heloise,  and  the  writing  of  "  The  Story 
of  my  Calamities,"  he  had  paid  many 
visits  to  her  abbey,  very  strictly  in  the 
character  of  her  spiritual  patron  and 
director.  The  tongues  of  the  world 
wagged  over  these  visits,  but  we  have 
only  to  read  Abelard's  "  dusty  answers 


Abelard  and  H'cloise 
to  Heloise's  letters  to  realize  that  the 
world  was  all  too  wrontr.  The  Abelard 
that  had  taught  Ileloise  her  Greek  and 
Hebrew,  and  floated  love-songs  through 
the  lattice  to  the  ears  of  an  eaves-drop- 
ping Paris,  was  dead.  He  was  now  a 
serious  doctor  of  divinity,  with  a  strong 
leaning  towards  asceticism.  The  old 
warm-blooded,  angel-eyed  dream  that 
Heloise  could  still  write  of  with  stirring 
bosom,  after  so  many  years,  and  still  re- 
gard— for  all  her  ecclesiastical  diginity  — 
as  the  crown  of  her  woman's  life,  was  for 
poor  Abelard  a  folly  and  a  foulness.  To 
her  burning  words  he  answered  with  dry 
counsels  of  perfection  —  in  letters  which, 
from  the  human  point  of  view,  are  the 
most  pitiful  things  in  literature. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  where  in  litera- 
ture has  a  woman  so  daringly  laid  bare 
her  heart  with  so  splendid  and  so  pure  a 
shamelessness !  When  we  consider,  too, 
the  time  in  which  she  lived,  all  the  dis- 
abilities under  which  a  woman  eager  to 


Old  Love  Stoj'ies  Retold 
*' utter  all  herself  upon  the  air"  must  have 
laboured,  the  courage  of  such  an  emotional  sin- 
cerity constitutes  an  achievement  before  which 
Abelard's  intellectual  audacities  seem  mere  col- 
lege triumphs.  Ah,  listen  how  this  twelfth  cen- 
tury abbess  dared  to  love: 

"...  All  your  wishes  I  have  blindly  fulfilled, 
even  to  the  point  that,  not  lacing  al)le  to  bring 
myself  to  offer  you  the  least  resistance,  I  have 
had  the  courage,  on  a  word  from  you,  to  lose 
myself.  I  have  done  still  more :  ah !  —  strange 
indeed  —  my  love  has  turned  to  such  madness 
that  it  has  sacrificed,  without  hope  of  ever  re- 
covering it,  that  Avhich  was  the  one  object  of  its 
desire;  at  your  command,  I  have,  with  a  new 
habit,  taken  another  heart,  just  to  show  you  that 
you  are  as  much  the  only  master  of  my  heart  as 
of  my  body.  Never,  God  is  my  witness,  have  I 
ever  sought  from  you  anything  but  just  yourself; 
it  is  you  only,  and  not  your  possessions,  that  I 
love.  I  have  never  given  a  thought  either  to  any 
questions  of  marriage  or  marriage  dower,  or  in- 
deed to  any  joys  or  wishes  of  my  own.  It  has 
been  yours  alone,  as  you  well  know,  that  I  have 
[180] 


Abelard  a?id  Heloise 
had  at  heart.  Although  the  name  of  wife  ap- 
pears more  sacred  and  more  binding,  I  myself 
would  have  liked  better  the  name  of  mistress,  or 
even  —  let  us  say  it  —  that  of  concubine  or 
courtesan:  in  the  thought  that  the  more  I  humbled 
myself  for  you,  the  more  I  should  win  the  right 
to  your  good  graces,  and  the  less  impaired  the 
glorious  renown  of  your  genius. 

' '  You  yourself  in  writing  that  letter  of  consola- 
tion to  a  friend  have  not  entirely  forgotten  these 
sentiments  of  mine.  You  have  not  disdained  to 
recall  some  of  those  reasons  for  which  I  did  my 
best  to  dissuade  you  from  our  fatal  marriage,  but 
you  have  passed  over  in  silence  almost  all  those 
which  made  me  prefer  love  to  marriage,  liberty 
to  a  chain.  I  take  God  to  witness  that  if  Augus- 
tus, master  of  the  world,  had  deemed  me  worthy 
of  the  honour  of  his  alliance,  and  assured  me  of 
the  Empire  of  the  universe  for  ever,  the  name  of 
courtesan  with  thee  would  have  seemed  sweeter 
and  nobler  than  the  name  of  empress  with  him; 
for  it  is  not  riches,  not  power,  that  makes  great- 
ness: riches  and  power  are  things  of  fortune; 
greatness  depends  upon  merit." 
[181] 


Old  Love  Stories  Retold 
Abelard  has  his  place  in  the  history 
of  philosophy,  but  his  name  would  hardly 
have  attained  its  familiarity  on  the  lips 
of  men,  had  it  not  been  for  his  love  story, 
and  the  real  love  in  the  story  was  that  of 
Heloise.  For  such  a  love  the  history  of 
love  has  but  few  parallels,  and  what  pic- 
ture could  be  more  dramatically  poign- 
ant than  that  with  which  the  story 
closes.  At  last,  all  his  battles  fought, 
Abelard  came  to  die,  and  Heloise,  by 
connivance  of  a  friendly  abbot,  con- 
trived that  his  body  should  be  brought 
in  secret  to  the  Paraclete.  The  Abbot 
of  Cluny  deserves  well  of  romance  for 
that  good  deed.  Heloise  survived  iVbe- 
lard  twenty-one  years,  and  much  of  that 
time  she  must  have  w^atched  over  his 
sleep  in  that  quiet  chapel  in  the  lonely 
valley  of  Arduzon.  Surely  no  love  story 
in  the  world  has  a  more  touching  end 
than  this,  an  end  more  picturesque  in 
its  pathos.  As  time  passed,  that  vigil 
must  have  grown  less  and  less  the  vigil 

182 


Abelard  and  Heloise 
of  a  wife's  heartbreak,  and  more  and  more 
the  vigil  of  a  mother  over  the  sleep  of  her 
tired  child.  For  a  woman's  love  is  always 
a  mother's  love  —  most  of  all,  perhaps, 
the  love  for  her  husband. 

A  pretty  story  tells  that  when  Heloise 
died  she  was  buried  in  the  same  tomb  as 
her  husband,  and  that  the  dead  man 
opened  wide  his  arms  to  receive  her. 
Certain  it  seems  that  the  ashes  of  the  two 
lovers  were,  at  one  time  or  another, 
mingled,  and  that  Abelard  and  Heloise 
now  rest  together  in  Pere  La  Chaise. 


183 


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